| Given how hard it was to find accommodations here in Rome and the hectic
pace here, I decided I've gone far enough south for now. It will only
get worse further south. From Rome I head north, but I'm not done with
Italy yet. I decided I must at least see Venice before leaving and that's where
I'm going next. I spent a good part of the day trying to find accommodations
in Venice but after a bit of web surfing and few email exchanges and a phone call
or two I was finally successful.
When I leave here on Thursday I will take a high speed train direct
to Venice, where for the first time I will have a hotel waiting for me.
It will be by the most expensive place so far, but I will only be there
for 2 nights. My current plan is to leave Venice on a night train to Vienna
and if that happens I will have plenty of time to take in St Mark's,
the canals and other local sites.
After I found the accommodations for Venice, I took a quick subway over to the
train station to reserve my trip to Venice. One thing that is kind of lame
about the rail pass is that you must go to the station to make your
reservations (required for all high speed trains) and you can't even
use the automated machines, you must wait in line for a ticket window.
Fortunately the lines were short and the station isn't far away.
After that I took in two major sites. I visited St Peter-in-Chains church
with Michelangelo's Moses and I toured the inside of the Colosseum. Here are
few photos from that.
The St Peter-in-Chains church.
The chains.
Michelangelo's Moses is in the middle.
The Colosseum. The area in the middle were underground passage
ways during Roman times. They were used to bring live animals
and other things on stage through trap doors to the ongoing shows.
Yours truly in the Colosseum.
On the second floor of the northern have of the Colosseum
they had a special exhibit on display with a few interesting
statues.
A Roman copy of a Greek original of Socrates.
I liked the description of this one "Statue of a Cynic philosopher".
Another photo of the Colosseum.
Another couple (better?) photos of the Arch of Constantine.
I would have liked to provide more information about some of the
photos above, but time is short. I just dropped in to the internet
cafe to confirm my hotel reservation for Venice (yes its good) and took
the opportunity to upload todays posting. Tomorow, my last full
day in Rome, will be a full uninterrupted day of site seeing and I'm
really looking forward to that. Although, whether I'm site seeing or not, it's
just interesting being over here, or any of the places I've visited for that matter. Seeing
the local and other tourists going about their day or chatting with folks like the guy running this internet cafe next to my apartment is just as interesting
as seeing a 2000 year old building like the Colosseum.
I can't beleive in a few days it will be one year since I quit my job. Don't miss that at all. Having fun. Life is good!
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