Colosseo/Forum

This was an ambitious day.  Meredith and I set out early to visit the offices of the Omni pass at. St. John Lateran and obtain our passes for the Vatican and other major attractions.  Having acquired them, we have only three days to use them.  Meanwhile, as Meredith and I navigated, Mom was supposed to be rousting the family and getting breakfast ready.  A couple notes about Meredith:  She has really been my travelling partner on this trip, always willing to accompany me anywhere, and we have seen some cool things together.  Our code names for each other are "Lewis" (me) and "Clark" and we depend on each other to re-cover ground once we've walked it together.  Meredith has really come into herself on this grip, and continues to grow and demonstrate a confidence that I haven't always seen at home.  It's a joy to watch.  Lastly, this post needs a reference to Meredith's smile--something that wins her friends everywhere she goes.  The man at the Omnia pass office couldn't quite figure out her name this morning, so he rechristened her "Maria Luce"--Mary of the Light--which is somehow rather fitting.  Once we got the passes and regrouped with the others, we headed out for the tour bus to take us to the Colosseo and Foro.  Fortunately/Unfortunately, it travels only one way, so we had to make the entire loop to get back to our destination.  This took time, but saved us some time on our feet.  At the Colosseo, we encountered a ridiculously long line, which the Roma Pass (it comes with the Omnia pass) didn't allow us to skip.  But as always, there is an answer in Italy:  Euro!  For an additional 13 Euro per person, we could hire a tour guide to take us past the line, and give us a tour of the ancient Colosseum as well as a quick overview of the Forum.  That was worth it, and we learned about gladiators, and Christians, and emperors and myths.  The girls were wide-eyed but able to repeat much of what they learned by day's end.  Among other cool stuff, we learned about the recycling of marble and statuary by both Romans and later Christians, we learned how cutting the aquaducts enabled Rome to fall to the barbarians, we learned how Rome shrank after its fall from peak population of 2.5 million to only 10,000 people and we reviewed the story of Romulus and Remus, learning coincidentally that the exact founding of Rome was April 21, 753 B.C. (still celebrated) and that the story of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus might have its foundation in truth, except that the  "lupa"--Latin for wolf--also means prostitute.  The ancient Romans, not wanting to identify their founding founders with the prostitute, substituted a wolf, and a legend was born.  We also learned that visiting the Colosseum can provide an "indulgence" of one year and 40 days if you kiss a certain marble cross and that visiting Rome during a jubilee year will produce four years of indulgence.  Needless to say, there were lots of follow up questions about prostitution and  the religious tradition of indulgences--perhaps not entirely such different concepts when viewed as payments for services rendered!  We ended the day with pizza at our by now favorite joint near the Arenula tram stop. It seems to be more favored by Romans than by tourists, but the pizza is great and the wine is better!  We returned to the apartment ready to rest our weary bodies and weary feet.  Meredith, Olivia and Scott split off to find a quicker way to the bus stop in preparation for our morning visit to the Vatican.  We were successful, and ended up a S. Maria Trastevere square, where once again we were entertained by our Hungarian stick twirlers, the fire twirler and the spray paint artist.  There is truly no place on earth where Meredith would rather be!   We bought sticks to take home so we could continue this fun hand-eye coordination game.  While at the piazza, I noticed the trash collection was in full swing again, so I went home to gather up the accumulated recyclables.  Just as I grabbed the last bag, the power went out and the fire alarm started sounding.  Bill had to be rousted out of bed, Linda threw on some attractive gold-and black striped tiger slippers with her green pajamas, Laura was in the shower and Olivia had to hold a flashlight long enough for her to throw on a nightgown, Meredith and Cecily generally had melt downs and I grabbed the backpack with passports and other important documents plus Laura's purse and the accumulated trash and we headed into the street.  (The trash was because I figured I might as well save the time and walk to the square while the authorities straightened out the situation.)  Once downstairs, I had to put the trash down to calm girls, only to have the helpful busybody tourist next door ask whether we intended to leave the trash there, as the police don't want people dumping on that corner.  No, B****, I don't, and as the fire alarm blares, the trash is not exactly my biggest problem.  No matter where you go in the world, some things are universal!