ROMA!!!!!! finale!!

Sorry it took so long, but finally, here are the rest of the Rome pictures:

On Wednesday, we went to the Colosseum and the Ancient Roman Forum. This is the Arc di Constantin outside of the Colosseum. Obviously, you can see the Colosseum in the background.

We took lots and lots of pictures in the Colosseum, but I'm only posting our favorites! It was just as breathtaking as it should be! I just love how it's been preserved but you can still see the age and the marks of time.

Here's a great shot of the underground passageways and a little bit of a reconstruction of the stage the way it would be in ancient Rome! The underground passageways is where the gladiators would have waited to fight as well as the wild animals and prisoners.

A better shot of the underground passageways

Another great shot of the Colosseum

And another!

From the top level, one of my favorite pictures of the whole trip!

Or maybe it's this one! A great panorama shot of the Colosseum

And of course, here we are at the Colosseum. It was very sunny, so Kyle's hat gave me a funny shadow, but still... WE'RE AT THE COLOSSEUM!!!!

By this point, you might be thinking that that sweater I'm wearing is awfully familiar, well, I forgot a jacket, so I had to wear that sweater over my shirts all week... weather.com said it would be low 70s all week, but it was quite windy.

After some lunch right outside of the Colosseum, we wandered over to the Palatino or Palace inside the Ancient Roman Forum

Again, the Palace in the Ancient Roman Forum

This was where the gardens would have been outside the Palace

I have no idea what this is, but I love the symmetry and that design. We've now moved out of the palace area to the regular Forum.

I love this one for the preserved original roof tiles!

The outside wall of the Forum with the Circus Maximus in the distance. Ever seen Ben Hur? The race scene was shot in the Circus Maximus. It was thee place for games before Colosseum was built.

Emporer Augustus' house in the Forum. I believe it's been partially restored, seeing as how it's more constructed than anything else in the Forum.

A view of the Forum through the trees

Minus the shadows, a great sweeping view of the Forum from a nice high vantage point

Another spectacular overview. See the Colosseum way in the background??

Whoo hoo, without the shadow, this is another one of my favorite shots of the trip!

Here's another spectacularly preserved church inside the Forum.

Another of our secret finds. This mound of rocks is actually where Julius Caesar is buried!

I absolutely love the angle on this photo. This is the Temple of Saturn. I just love this photo, so I made it super big!

Another great shot of the Forum. And to think, Kyle was feeling like crap this day, his cold was just gaining ground.

One last shot of the Forum... one of our last views of the eternal city!

One more memory to leave you with: this is the national monument. The Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. It also has one of those eternal flames that's guarded and is never supposed to go out. At this point though, we were tired, not feeling well in his case, and hungry, so we called an end to the siteseeing after this. I mean, I've only posted about 10% of the total pictures, so if it feels like you're left hanging, gimme a few days and I'll have all 500 pictures up on photobucket! We literally went everywhere and saw just about everything!


Now... Back to wedding stuff!!!