This was our first full day in Rome. It was cool and rainy – but that was the forecast for the length of our stay – so we thought since it wasn’t really raining – it may be as good a time as any to go do some outdoor things: the Colosseum and the Forum.

There is really no way to describe the impressive magnitude of the Roman Colosseum (technically: The Flavian Amphitheater) – it’s one of those things that you have seen probably thousands of times in pictures and movies – but when you are actually standing next to it, it suddenly takes on a whole different scale.

The kids loved it  – which was great as we were still a bit hesitant as to how much touring ancient architectural sites was going to be considered a great vacation for a 4, 7 & 9 year old.  Of course these are the kids who had a afternoon with me in Grenoble last week, were told they could choose what to do — and they couldn’t agree – so we went to both  the art museum and the archeological museum.

The Roman Forum – could be considered the remains of downtown Rome from about 2,000 years ago.  Amazing. Strolling around the remnants of so many massive and complex structures, and amazingly carved marble statues that remain some 20 centuries after they were made.

Of course the other thing that strikes one about the Roman Empire is: wow. This was all pretty much built with spoils of war, on the backs of slaves, taxing millions of ‘citizens’, to build up an infrastructure that was mostly for the benefit of the few incredibly rich.

By the time we got back to our apartment I have no idea how many kilometers we must have walked around Rome, and the kids were amazing.

We had eaten a huge lunch at about 2:30 – so we made a smaller supper at our apartment, the kids watched some incredibly strange/poorly done Italian over-dubbing of some really weird Japanimation and then it was bed time.