Day Three

After our long second day, we slept in and decided to take it easy. We grabbed some breakfast at our hotel (breakfast isn't big in Italy...bummer)and wandered over to the Colosseum. Now, as I said, I detest tours. But the line was long, so in order to cut the line we agreed to a 45 minute tour. It was again, led by an archeologist, and it was pretty interesting. It was unfortunately raining a little. But the real bummer was that none of the cats of the Colosseum were out and about! There's a colony of about 200 cats that live in the Colosseum...the last time I was there, I vividly remember all the cats around me. I was really looking forward to seeing them and feeding them! I had even brought some cat food in my luggage. I was also looking forward to seeing the "basement" where the slaves and animals were kept, but it had been closed off a week before we arrived. Oh well. We also checked out the Pantheon that day. It was under renovation of some sort from the outside. In spite of the fact some horrific things took place at the Colosseum, like the killing of animals and slaves, it's an amazing structure. And the tour guide reminded us that in reality, we are just seeing the skeleton of the Colosseum, and way back when it looked a lot different, and had marble and statues all over. So weird.