Anna in Rome

NB: I have pinched this from an email Anna wrote to her folks. I think it adds some nice colour to my drab description of our last three days. Enjoy!

The touring is going well. We are in Rome now - and it's more enjoyable than Naples because you can walk around without having to dodge cars and motorbikes. The Romans have made it illegal to drive in the historic areas of the city - yay.

The only negative thing about Rome compared to Naples is the food. We now realise just how good the food was in Naples - and cheap - and plentiful. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Yesterday we went to the Colosseum, which was pretty amazing. It actually looks more spectacular when viewed from a distance. The three levels of arches are quite beautful and striking. Each level uses a different type of column capital - Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. From inside I thought it felt kind of small - although when you went to the top level and looked down it did feel very high. I guess we've seen so many amazing constructions now its getting harder to be really impressed.

It's also difficult to imagine all the bloodthirsty things that went on there. When it first opened they had games that went on for something like a hundred days, and thousands of animals were killed for sport - including exotic animals like lions and tigers. They were also able to flood the arena and have mock naval battles. I'm not sure about the Colosseum, but in other Roman arenas such as the one in Siracuse (Sicily), they also fought crocodiles in the pools.

It's very warm here. I'm not sure how warm but possibly 26 degrees. It's the hottest its been our entire holiday. Yesterday the heat totally wiped us out and we ended up lying under a tree on the Palatine Hill. This is a kind of a parky area full of ruins, where the well-to-do built their houses. Later the Emperors built here too, over the top of the other houses.