Rome, Italy

Our overnight train ran a little late, as we were soon to find out is normal for Italian trains, and we awoke about an hour outside of Rome with time enough for a leisurely caffe Americano and hot tea before arrival. We needed the relaxation, because before long, we had pulled into Rome's Tibertino station. It's not the biggest station in Rome, but it was certainly the busiest station we'd seen so far on our trip.

Our first task was to turn ourselves into half-millionaires with the acquisition of 500,000 lire. Flush with this staggering amount of cash (actually only about $260 US), we took the subway to the even more chaotic main station in Rome, then headed out on foot to see the sights.

We stopped in the shadow of Trajan's column to enjoy our "breakfast" gelati, the first of many. It was staggeringly hot, but we couldn't hold ourselves back from exploring the Forum. We spent hours walking among the ruins, passing temples, markets, triumphal arches and other monuments. The scale of the Forum is stunning. It's hard to believe that all of these structures were built so long ago, without modern techniques, and that so many are still standing, at least in part.

Speaking of impressive scale, our next stop was the Coliseum. We walked through the interior, again marveling at the construction. Most of the damage to the structure was caused not by decay over time but from its use as a stone quarry for other building projects, and that's amazing for two reasons; first, that if left alone the building today would be in a far better state of repair, and second, that anyone could even think of dismantling it to build something else.

Many of the monuments in Rome are being unearthed after having been buried in the 1920's and 30's by Mussolini, so everywhere we looked we saw earth-moving equipment. In addition to the normal (read: excessive) Roman traffic, this kicked up quite a bit of dust. Feeling rather dusty ourselves, we headed back to the station to catch a train to Formia. We were met at the station by Linda and Monique G., who drove us (Linda did the driving, Monique navigated) to their home in Gaeta.