The ROJ go to Il Colosseo

My first time in Rome was in 2015 when two of my girlfriends and I had nearly completed a three week tour of London, Paris, Annecy, Verona, Florence, and finally Rome, from whence we were to fly home. We spent most of those two days stumbling around the bus system, shaking off persistent Italian men, and eating gelato.

We walked miles ‘round and ‘round the Vatican, trying to find the Sistine chapel and by the time we found the entrance, had already passed the time of day when they were letting in more people and wouldn’t sell us tickets. It wasn’t a good time.

The final day in Europe we walked down to the Coliseum and per our usual style, had not purchased tickets and arrived too late to get in anyhow. Still, I remember walking the way up through the ruins and past the Coliseum, and then up a wide avenue lined with trees. In the fresh, Italian twilight someone was playing guitar and singing and to this day it is a treasured memory. I felt happy to be alive in Rome, on a November evening.

Now, eight years later I returned with a different set of girlfriends, anxious to get to know Rome better. Again, it was a rocky beginning, with a severe case of jetlag, but as usual, I forgave Rome to the uttermost. It’s a city one wants to forgive.

Even though I had not slept a wink, and I mean that truly, after I cried a little and took a cold shower it was time to go. We had, again, not purchased tickets for anything and of course the official websites had been sold out for months so being the resourceful women we are, found a small business selling them last minute. There’s almost always a way to get a ticket if one walks enough side streets, or looks remotely interested in a historic site.

We waited around in a hot September sun and finally our guide showed up toting little cheap audio receivers with even cheaper headphones. That was a relief. They might have been scamming us.

The audio mostly worked, and off we went.

It was truly a pleasure. I can’t remember the guide’s name, but he was wonderful. He truly loved his job and the subject matter and was enthusiastic about how Christianity changed the Roman world. That was an unexpected fun part of the tour while he explained the architecture, the arches, and the sound engineering. I hadn’t known that the games in the Roman days were free, but it was something that Caesar gave to his citizens as perks of the empire. They had designed the structure to allow for cross breezes and we felt them too. They were wonderful.

Standing there was awe-inspiring. The Coliseum was a shadow of its former self but you could almost hear the frenzy of the crowd and smell the blood, the roar of the animals, and feel the horror as they brought giant snakes into the arena. We most often think of lions associated with the coliseum but they brought in many exotic and dangerous animals and reptiles. We learned too that many of the gladiators were “protected” because they were on contract and wealthy people had invested into them. A gladiator could go free after their contract was over but they would lose the protections of their patrons and it was considered even more dangerous than fights in the ring because by this time they had made a lot of other people lose money. The original mafia.

Our tour of the coliseum lasted about an hour or hour and a half and afterward we wandered the grounds. Wandering the dusty, Roman paths and seeing ancient ruins was almost holy to me because I imagined the apostle Paul delivering addresses from some of these steps. It was very beautiful there.

The ROJ three. The fourth was usually behind the camera.

It was a tough day because I am used to sleeping well and walked around in a half daze all day. Still I am nothing if not too romantic at times so it seemed somewhat appropriate that the scene of so much hardship would have a tiny little share of it for me. At least, I wasn’t sleepless and then eaten by a lion the next day.

Again, truly happy to be alive in Rome.