Roman Colosseum, Day 3

(continued from previous Europe trip entry…)

Now we were ready to hit the big Roman attractions, and where else could we have chosen but…

The Colosseum.  Pictures do not do justice the size of this monster.  As soon as we descended the steps to approach the structure, we were greeted by these friendly Gladiators, who Karen took a picture with…

What a nice service from the Colosseum, I thought.  What?  You want me in the picture too?  And you’ll take the picture for us?  Hand you the camera?  Now wait a minute…

As soon as I denied his request, he immediately asked for money.  Initially I refused, but after some haggling, I relented and handed him just a few petty euros.  He watched me in disgust as we hurriedly zipped out of there.  Apparently I had missed this crucial paragraph in my guidebook:

Beware of Goofy Gladiators: For a fee, the incredibly crude modern-day gladiators snuff out their cigarettes and pose for photos.  They take easy-to-swindle tourists for too much money.  Watch out if you tangle with these guys (they’re armed… and accustomed to getting as much as 100 euros from naive Asian tourists).

I suppose we got off easy.

It may be difficult to identify the long line in this picture, but a long line runs somewhere along the middle of the building.  Armed with the Rick Steve guide, we headed to a secret passage that led to a covert ticket booth at a deserted side of the Roman Forum.  Colosseum wait time: 1 hour.  Deserted entrance wait time: 2 minutes.

After what seemed like an endless flight of stairs, we entered the interior…

saw some ancient roman misplaced labels…

and breathed in the immense size of the interior of this place. Pictures cannot do justice unless the picture is enlarged to an appreciable dimension.

The bottom part was supposed to house different trap doors for wild beasts to appear and devour the gladiators.

Finally, we’ve visited our first Roman attraction–a building from the first century where the Romans stuck two theatres together to watch people get their body parts chewed off and people getting killed.  Such savage sport… glad we don’t have anything like this today.  Oh wait, I guess there’s boxing.

After exiting the colosseum, we headed toward…

…the Arch of Constantine, where Emperor Constantine defeated Maxentius in the Battle of Milvian Bridge after seeing the vision of a cross in the sky the night before.  This is where Christianity is legalized.  Before AD 300, you were killed as a Christian, but afterwards, you were killed for not being one.

After this, we headed over to the Roman Forum next door, but I’ll share that next time, on my blog!