Woke up to my alarm going off and I realized there was another sound….the hotel fire alarm was going off!!! I opened my door and ventured in to the hallway and no one was around: no smoke, no smell of smoke, no noise at all. The fire doors had closed but otherwise, nothing. So I walked around a bit and looked for staff but nobody around. No guests either. It was very strange. The alarm silenced after a few minutes and I went up to breakfast. I asked the desk clerk on my way out and he said that a construction crew had done something that set it off…no worries. But how was I (or any of the other guests) suppose to know that??? I actually wonder, tho, if I would have even heard the alarm if my alarm had not woken me up. It was not very loud. I worried about the fact that the only way I could lock my hotel room from inside was to lock it with a key. Having the fire alarm going off made that worry more relevant. In the middle of the night, would I remember which way to turn the key or how many times it had to spin? (and it seemed like you had to spin it a crazy amount of times!)

I took an Uber to the Coliseum because it was a fair bit away and my back was still killing me. I had bought a ticket with an audio guide and access to the underground level. Not too bad getting in but once in, it was pretty crowded. The Coliseum is a pretty cool building and the fact that is was completed in 80 AD blows my mind. It was also a very advanced structure. They had pulley systems to run elevators, and eighty vertical tunnels and hinged platforms to move animals and scenery. But I couldn’t get out of my head, its purpose. Gladiator battles and executions were the main attraction for the first 400 years. The cruelty of the executions and torture of animals and the fact that up to 80,000 people would watch them just makes me sick to my stomach. Sometimes I think that humanity has not evolved at all but at least we don’t do that anymore. I realized that I did not buy an underground ticket, just an arena floor ticket which meant I got to go about 15 feet lower into the structure. Big Whoop. But I was ok with it because the place kind of gave me the creeps.

I headed across the courtyard to Palatine Hill. I did not have any guide or audio guide for this and the signage was pretty much non-existent. Turns out it was the residential area for the wealthy as early as 1000 BC!!! Cool remains but by this time it was getting hot and my back was screaming again. The walkways around the Coliseum and Palatine Hill were these huge stones that you basically kind of had to stretch to go from one to another. Very difficult walking. I got myself some lunch at their cafe and had a drink, chips, ad a huge trapizzino for 9 euros! If you go to a nice sit down restaurant, meals were comparable to the US but more casual food was dirt cheap. I took an Uber back to my hotel, napped, showered and headed out to Piazza Navona for a nice dinner. I had linguine with seafood and the amount of of seafood was impressive. I think it was 28 euros so pretty much the same price as here, maybe a little cheaper. The most popular drink here is the Aperol Spritz. You could get one at Happy Hour for $5! Time to go back to the hotel and pack for tomorrow I board the ship for my Mediterranean cruise!!

Palatine Hill