Italy: A Country Of Superlatives

I flew straight to Rome from Athens, and stayed there for three nights. I decided to take the metro to the Colosseum. Now, for example in Paris, when you get off the metro at the Eiffel Tower stop, you still have to walk a fair distance before you actually see the tower. Not so here. I walked out into the sunshine and THERE IT WAS: Il Colosseo. Wow.

I'm finding that, for me, it's really the 3-dimensional attractions that are the most stupefying. To see original paintings, even if they are my favorites, is cool, but they pretty much look the same as they have in the pictures and prints I've been looking at my whole life. But to come around a corner and see the Colosseum, or Stonehenge, or the Venus de Milo, or Michelangelo's David! Well there's really nothing like it.

I also wandered through the Roman Forum across the street (the ruins of the center of ancient Rome), and had to buy the audio guide or I would never have had a clue what I was looking at. In Rome, I also began honing my skills at nonchalantly joining tour groups for which I haven't paid...an art I am still mastering.

Now, don't think of this as a "I've seen so many ancient ruins, oh poor me," but I must say that after coming from Greece, the ruins in Rome, although impressive, were sort of...er...plain. I think mainly because, as one of "my" tour guides explained, they were built from brick and then usually painted or covered over with marble/gold/whatever beautiful substance facades.

Ancient Romans would never leave their buildings without something covering the brick, no matter how poor they were.