Thursday 30 October 2014

Rome 2014 Day 5

As Saturday had been a big walking day, and a late night for us; plus we had planned big sightseeing days for Monday and Tuesday - we decided to take it easy on the Sunday. Also, Sunday is not really the best day to go sightseeing as it's even more crowded than usual everywhere because of the weekend.


We took the metro from "our" stop Lepanto, nearly all the way to the end of the line at the other end, to the shopping mall Cinecittà Due.


Carin had told us that this was the only mall we could reach without having a car, and since we had a few things we wanted to shop for, we thought it was a good idea to go where it would be all in one place. It was a bit smaller than we had expected (well, we do live in the UAE where everything is BIG!), but we still managed to get a few things.


Many moons ago when I first visited Rome, the postcard sellers were swarming around every tourist spot with their folded up little booklets of postcards, pestering you to buy some. Nowadays it's these guys that pester you - the "selfie-stick"-sellers!
How times have changed, ha ha!



Later in the afternoon we met up with the Teti Family again. Carin wanted to take us for gelato at one of her favourite places, where they make their own home made ice cream:



Then she took us for a guided walk around the Jewish quarters, also known as the Ghetto.



"Tripping stones", built into the pavement, to remember those who were deported to the concentration camps from here in the 1940s.



The center of the Ghetto is considered to be the Portico di Ottavia, a tempel built sometime after 27 BC, and used as a fish market from the medieval period and up to the end of the 19th century. Carin had many stories to tell and the kids had many questions.



She also walked us past the Theatro di Marcello, an ancient open-air-theatre built in the closing years of the Roman Republic.


In the 16th century they added housing on top of the theater, and apparently you can now rent these apartments, and one was even for sale quite recently.


The Great Synagogue of Rome:


From the Ghetto, we walked over the oldest bridge in Rome, Ponte Fabricio (built 62 BC!) to the only island in the Tiber river, Tiber Island.




The island isn't very big, so we quickly passed across over to the other side.



Il Ponto Rotto, the broken bridge:


 Tempio di Ercole Vincitore:


We went to see Bocca della Verità, but the queue to get in to put your hand in it's mouth was horrendous, so we decided just to have a look from outside the fence:


We then walked past Circus Maximus. Even in our day, such an impressive sight!


Colosseum by night!


We all had dinner together at this cosy little restaurant in the area behind the Colosseum. Super yummy pizza, fabulous house wine and an amazing meat platter, mmm!




 How to get some extra time to finish off dinner, when the kids have already finished theirs..:



Family night selfie in front of the Colosseum waiting for the bus:

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