Sightseeing like a geek

These past few days I went to Rome with my wife. It was our mutual Christmas present , just the two of us. I have never been to Rome before, so naturally the weekend was tightly packed with sightseeing plans.

No person in their right mind would even dream of trying to see everything there is to see in Rome with only 3 days at their disposal, but we wanted to at least se the major sights , Colloseum, the palatine hill, forum romanum, pantheon, the vatican museums and the cathedral of st Peter
We arrived in the afternoon and managed to get to the Colloseum just as they closed for the day, and the same with the palatine hill, so we decided to go north and see the piazza del popolo , then south and west again past the Borgo Sant'Angelo and over to the vatican state and the cathedral. Everything was just closed as we arrived but it was a very pleasant stroll none the less, we sensed the general mood of the City, and enjoyed the temperature which was mild and pleasant compared to Denmark.

the next morning we got up early, then went past the Pantheon, which is quite breathtaking, especially if you take its age into account. We still got to Colloseum early and managed to go more or less directly in. A nice surprise since everybody constantly warned us about the excessively long queues (with good reason as we learned later) .
We bought the ticket at a ticket booth over by the little ( comparatively) arc de triomphe and it turned out it was valid for both Colloseum, the Palatine hill and Forum romanum, so After Colloseum, we went directly over to the next queue for the palatine hill. This one was considerably larger (app. 1 hour) but the sun came out and we could sit on a low wall while waiting So it was actually quite pleasant.

When I do sightseeing I always tend to get caught by nerdy details, like the craftmanship of a stoneflower or the foot of a statue. I take tons of images of such things and keep them as references for later. I think a lot of people who do art of any kind do likewise, and even though my wife sometimes has to put up with me spending far too long on insignificant details, she takes it well.

Take a look at this flower for example. The combination of meticulous craftmansship and aeons of patina is quite fascinating - at least I think so.

the visit at the Palatine Hill and Forum Romanum (which are one connected area) concluded our premade plans for the day but it was only around 3 Pm so we took some late lunch (and a cold beer) and strolled up to the Borgo Sant'Angelo.

I had heard that they had a nice weapons collection and so I had made a secret plan to lure my wife in there. since we had just eaten and we had time to kill, she agreed even though i think she had seen through my attempts at getting some geek-sightseeing time. It turned out to be quite interesting, for both of us and as a bonus it had a very cosy bar at the top where we got (another) beer with a view of the vatican. The weapons collection was small but very interesting in that they had several combination weapons and curiosities
amongst these a pistol/sword and a pistol/warhammer

after that, we went out for some dinner.
Rome is a very nice place to eat out. Plenty of good restaurants and very cheap compared to Denmark. I think we had probably walked 15 kilometer on the first day and a little less on this second day. we were exhausted when we got back to our room so it was straight to bed, so that we could be ready for the third day, where the theme would be The Vatican

Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here

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