Olivia's 7th Journal Entry

Wednesday:
     I think dad's goal is to walk us to death. We had another long day today with visiting the Baths of Caracalla and Castel Sant' Angelo. The baths were enormous. As soon as you walked in, you saw just how big the baths were. Apparently 6,000 people could fit in there at once and it's not hard to imagine given the size of the building. We also learned about how the Romans had three main rooms they bathed in. They had a frigidarium, thermadarium, caldarium and a swimming pool. The frigidarium was the cold pool. The thermadarium was the hot pools. The caladarium was the steam room and the swimming pool was just to relax and for recreation. They also had gyms and bars. The bath was a huge complex and fairly amazing too. The amount of water needed to fill all the rooms in addition to the fact that the water was constantly flowing in and out to keep it clean and the water had to be kept warm it was just amazing. They had very limited technology and they were still able to do so much. The baths were truly incredible to think about. Castel Sant' Angelo was an incredible fortress. It was interesting to know the Pope had had to hide there for a long time because lots of people wanted to kill him. Something incredibly interesting was the amount of rooms in the fortress. The pope would have had a lot to explore in the fortress and things to keep him occupied. There was a library and a treasurer and places to store wheat and many many many other rooms. We climbed about 500 stairs in the fortress but it still didn't come as close to the 1000 steps we climbed at the Tower if London! We eventually got to the top of the tower though and had a gorgeous view of Rome. We got some amazing pictures and the entire experience was wonderful. Now it's time for bed though because I'm really tired after these pat few days.