Traveling with a baby means that there has to be constant access to food for her. You can just imagine our joy when I spoke to the hotel manager, and he managed to get me a refrigerator where we could put yoghurt for Emilia, and other breakfast articles for us. It was such a relief not needing to run out every morning to hunt down breakfast.
We decided to pick up our sight-seeing where we left off the previous day. That meant completing our tour of the Roman Forum and then on to the Colosseum. It was a long line to get tickets, so I walked next to the line up to the ticket booth to find out what was going on. Apparently, you could either stand in line for 15-30 minutes to get tickets to get in, from the only booth that was opened, or you could go to the other two(!) booths that had no line what-so-ever, buy an audio tour together with your ticket and go straight in. We chose the latter.
Naturally, we couldn't get just one phone...
Once inside we had one phone each with taped tour guide recordings. Naturally, we couldn't get just one phone and share it, then we wouldn't meet the prerequisites to avoid the long queue...
We took turns listening to the different parts of the tour and watching Emilia. The weather was at least as warm as the day before, so she wasn't exactly thriving. Colosseum was built in 80 AD and could have an audience of at least 50 000 persons. It's truly horrible trying to picture all the ghastly things that have taken place here (and in other places of Rome). Standing here, I also felt a wish to see the movie Gladiator again. What saddens me about many major sights in Rome, and especially Colosseum, is the big roads surrounding them with heavy traffic. The noise, pollution and especially the wear and tear of the historical places is a shame.
After that, it was Palatine's turn to be explored. The Palatine Hill is the founding place of Rome, where Romulus and Remulus supposedly suckled the milk from the she-wolf. The first traces of inhabitants in this area goes back to 9th century BC. There were many things to see, and the view of the Roman Forum and the Colosseum from there was spectacular! You could also see over the area where the Circo Massimo used to be, a race track course with wooden seatings for up to 200 000 visitors.
If you're going to travel with a child, go to Italy!
If you're going to travel with a child, go to Italy! Italians are generally a very open and friendly people, and they just love kids. Emilia was met with Ciao bella! wherever we went, and she loved the attention and flirted shamelessly with everyone. And when she found someone too interested in her, she usually played hard to get for a while, before she flashed them her dazzling smile!
One thing's for sure: there will be no "Dad, I wanna go to Rome to learn Italian"-trips for her in the future...