Finishing up the trip, Thursday and Friday, September 29-30, 2022

So it turns out that the Roman Senate met in several places, one of which was in the Roman Forum. The meeting place where Julius Caesar was assassinated, however, is a ways away and hidden underneath a street at Largo di Torre Argentina.

See in the photo above there are several temples' ruins on the site.

But toward the right in this photo are some trees, beyond which are the ruins of the Senate meeting place, the Theatre of Pompey, where ol' Julius was stabbed to death. Et tu, Brute!!

And in these ruins is a cat sanctuary. Yes, channeling the spirits of Julius Caesar and his murderous countrymen are all kinds of cats! Look at the beautifully patterned coat on the tabby in the photo below. I suspect he is Caesar reincarnated.

And then my Sammy's ghost, living his best life...

And three more kitties. I swear, there are no duplicates here.

I was in heaven. As you might expect, I now follow the cat sanctuary, Gatti di Torre Argentina, on Instagram. I could have stayed there for the rest of the day, but Kathie was anxious to get to the Trajan Forum. More ruins...

Here is Trajan's Colonna, backed by an ominous sky.

We hightailed it to lunch, where Kathie again had her new favorite - tonnarelli cacio e pepe.

From here we hustled over to the Ponte Sant'Angelo to meet my teammate's daughter and first mama of my kitty Calcifer. She is doing a term in Roma for school, lucky girl. It was so nice to see her!

On the way home, we came up on this poor tired tourist. She had just had enough!

Luckily, there was an angel nearby to raise her up.

One last wave to the Castel Sant'Angelo, this time from the back. By now we were dragging and couldn't seem to find our way out of the site. Oh look, there's the bridge by which the pope escapes!

Dinner around the corner from the hotel, followed by a run back through the rain to pack and plan how I was going to get home the next day through the hurricane.

Hurricane aside, we had really nice weather on this trip and saw lots of beautiful scenery and nice flowers (oleander, prickly pear cacti, jasmine, plumbago, bougainvillea). The Italian bread wasn't as good as I remembered it, but the pasta and cappuccino more than made up for it! On our way to the airport early on Friday morning, we passed the Circus Maximus. How did we miss that? Oh well. Arrivederci, Italia!

What could be left? Wednesday, September 28, 2022

What could possibly be left after visiting the Vatican? With two days until our flight home on Friday, you know we found more stuff to see.

On Wednesday, we went back to St. Peter’s Basilica for a more leisurely visit.

We happened to witness this little parade. We didn’t catch the saint’s identity, so you can make up whatever name/story you think suits.

We caught lunch in a little place. Now I can't remember what I ate but I had a lovely Coca-cola while Kathie read up on what Rick Steves had to say about Rome.

The Colosseum. Woof, I hated the Colosseum. HATED it. All of the people taking selfies and merrily being tourists in a place that had seen so much violence and bloodshed, apparently unaware of the ancient suffering and bad vibes hovering around them. Kathie took some nice photos but I think this one is the best, showing the “basement” where the fighters and beasts would have awaited their fates.

And then a hop, skip, and jump over to the Roman Forum. Here’s a tourist ambling along on Palatine Hill.

That particular tourist took a bunch of photos from the hill. I like these.

In the photo just above, the pinkish brick two story in the upper left was the senate building. Remember this.

Back down in the forum itself, she got a lovely shot of the surviving columns of Il Tempio dei Dioscuri (the twins Castor and Pollux).

I was more interested in more mundane ruins, for example this shot that I call "ancient building components graveyard". Much like our Home Depot or Lowes.

Remember the senate building I referred you to above? It was NOT the senate where Julius Caesar was assassinated, which was a shock to at least one of us. Remember this for tomorrow's post.

Walk, walk, walk. We wore ourselves out trying to find our way out of the darn place, so we ubered back to the hotel for a quiet dinner.