Today was all about The Forum and Palatine Hill. We headed out from our hotel and decided to take back streets to walk to the Forum. I wanted to stop by the touristy clothing stalls at the Campo de Fiori market to replace my AWOL hat, but alas, they hadn’t set up for the day yet. On we went, wending our way through the tiny streets until we popped out by the humongous Vittorio Emanuele monument.
We worked our way between the monument and the Capital Museum and were treated to a nice view of the back of the Forum. We worked our way to the ticket counter and stood in a fairly short line. Now, we had purchased (But not activated) our Roma Passes two days before, but it was a bit unclear how to use them. It turns out that we needn’t have waited in line at all. We could have just walked over to the turnstiles and gone straight in. It worked out just fine, however, because you rent the audio guides from the same booth.
We each got our own audio guide and I lucked out because I still had the headphones from one of our other guides tucked away in a pocket. Poor Kris was stuck holding the phone to his head the entire day. This brings me to tip number 2 for the day: Bring comfortable, wired headphones with you. The guided tours all give you receivers for the guides and provide terrible ear buds to go with. With the various rentable audio guides at historic sites like the Forum, Pompeii, etc, it’s a bit hit or miss if headphones are included in the rental. And even if they are, they aren’t necessarily that comfortable for extended use.
Anyway, we head into the Forum armed with our audio guide where we had the choice of a long or short tour. The short tour was listed at an hour and change and the long tour was billed at 2 hours and 15 minutes. We opted for the longer version. We found the sign for the 1st stop and started listening to the excellent audio tour. However, when the first one ended, it was totally unclear where stop 2 was, so we listened a bit, wandered a bit and stumbled upon where we were supposed to be. It wasn’t until almost 2.5 hours and more than 30 stops that Kris realized that there was a map with a GPS dot showing where you were that also had pins for the various audio stops. Gah!
The Forum was amazing. I think I was most struck by the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. In my head this was a huge temple, but the reality is that you could fit the temple foot print in my living room. The living quarters for the Virgins on the other hand was huge!
Conversely, I was blown away by how huge the Basilica of Maxentius was. Built 1700 years ago, it dwarfs many modern buildings. The view of the city from the top of Palatine Hill is spectacular!
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| View from Palatine Hill |
I’ll admit, I hit the historical wall pretty shortly after seeing the excavation of the first huts of Rome. By this point we were a solid three hours in and the crowds were impressively thick. A surprising number of tours bore cruise ship logos and people who were clearly not prepared for a long city walking tour. Of special note was a woman in black wedges who was clearly in so much pain from ill fitting shoes it made my feet hurt to watch her. Which brings me to my tips for a walking vacation.
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