Our European Adventure

We decided to go get a really good look at the colosseum and see if we could maybe get a good tour guide like Daniella. Sigh. Nobody can beat her outgoing cheerfulness and encyclopaedic knowledge. So we arrive there and this blonde chick makes a beeline for us and starts asking if we want to go to the colosseum and telling us how long the line is and that there’s this great tour we can take where we skip the line and also get a free tour of palatine hill which is REALLY GREAT and despite all our scepticism she friggin’ won us over with her damn AUSTRALIAN ACCENT!!! We have missed it for so long that we mistook familiarity with trust and decided to shell out for this “amazing” tour. Okay, start rolling your eyes here if you must, but keep in mind there were a bunch of other aussies who also got suckered by her (her name was Tess, which made her even more annoying if you ask me) and they agreed that it was the accent that did it!

So off we go with this Italian, big-haired, big-mouthed woman who reminded us faintly of a cheaper crapper version of Daniella for about five minutes, until we realised that she really had no right calling herself a tour guide. For example: “I bet you are all wondering which is the original wall off the colosseum and which is the new wall???” – pause for effect – “Well, come this way, and I WILL SHOW YOU!!!” (said with absolute glee at the thought of showing us the wall, like we hadn’t already walked around and realised that the really old crumbly falling apart wall was the old one and the stronger new looking one was the new one.) “Ooooh,” said the rest of the tour group.

“Uh huh,” said Mel and Michelle.

There were only like ten of us in the group but Yourguide (that’s what we called her because she said, “hello I am Your-guuiiiiiddde,” really fast like that was her name) kept marching off holding this yellow book – I think she just got it from the colosseum book shop so she could read bits out of it instead actually knowing anything about the colosseum – high above her head so we didn’t get lost. She loved it! She thought she was so special with that book and it was pure comedy the way she would say, “Now come this waaayyyy!!!!” and extend her right arm like she was presenting the most awesome thing ever to the King and Queen, not just trudging around with a bunch of disgruntled tourists. We laughed and laughed.

Oh, the best thing was when she kept losing her train of thought while she was talking so she’d just trail off and never return to what she was saying, she’d just start gabbing on about something totally different instead! So lame! At one stage she quickly told us to, “look around by yourselves and take photos. Please, take your time, be as long as you want!” just so she could wander off and start TEXTING! Argh!

Anyway despite Yourguide’s crap commentary, the colosseum was pretty cool, but we learnt more from the children’s books we bought at the gift shop than we did on the tour. Ha! It was pretty cool to check out the labyrinth under where the stage part was where they kept the animals and gladiators before they went out. It would have been so awful under there listening to the roaring crowd and other guys getting ripped to pieces by lions right above you… Ew. Ancient Romans were gross.

So… after a lot of confusion we realised the tour was over (we didn’t even go up the stairs yet!) so we got to have a little look around on our own. That part was good because we kind of tagged along on other people’s tour groups that were way better than ours and got to hear some cool stories.

We were meant to meet the new tour guide for palatine hill at 3pm and we thought, why not? If it’s crap we can just disappear and give ourselves a tour once we’re inside the gates. But who would’ve thought, a couple of ring-ins joined the tour! Now it’s one thing to listen in on someone else’s commentary, but these two tagged along on the entrance fee as well! Poor Richard, the guide, couldn’t work out why he suddenly didn’t have enough tickets to get everyone in, and the lame mother-daughter combo refused to own up! We wondered, loudly, why the tour group had grown bigger? But still they just stood there looking innocent. I even heard the mum say, “I’m not sure that this is our tour group,” to her daughter! Oh man, it was funny.

Anyway after it all got organised we finally got to check out palatine hill and the roman forum and it was pretty awesome. How can these structures stay put for so many years? They’re ruins, obviously, but even so you’d expect there to be nothing left after earthquakes and wars and different rulers making decisions and recycling materials… but there it was. You could tell where the ballroom used to be. And of course, the story about where the Christians were thrown to the lions seemed to change depending on whom you asked. I guess Rome doesn’t want to own up to all that mess now that the Pope calls it home. We stayed till the guards starting blowing fiercely on their whistles and kicking us out. They were so aggro!

Okay, so we don’t mind Italian food, but after constant pizza and pasta day after day we were craving curry sooooo bad! We looked up an Indian restaurant and had the best curries and samosas. So good. Judge all you want. We still drank Italian wine.