Day 11 [17-Oct]: Rome

Woke up a little later since I didn't want to rush around. I got out of hostel slightly before 10am and bought a donut at a cafe nearby for breakfast. Headed to the metro station while eating on the move. It was a pretty short metro ride as I headed to the colosseo station, which is 5 stops away.

As I alighted and walked towards the colosseum, several tour promoters were trying to sell their guided tours with the biggest advantage of being able to skip the queues. I decided to go for the guided tour since I can skip the queues and listen to stories of the colosseum as well as the palatine hill and the roman forum.

We were greeted with a wacky senior guide who constantly asked for attention while he tells the stories. We started the tour outside the colosseum with an introduction to the Arch of Constantine. Shortly after, we entered the colosseum with more stories. After the stories about the colosseum, we were given about 1 hour to roam around in the colosseum before starting the next part of the tour. It was quite interesting to note that cock fights and bull fights in Europe originated from the colosseum because they ran out of supplies of wild animals (lions, tigers, etc) due to import issues from Africa.

After roaming around and taking quite a number of photos, I exited the colosseum and gathered with the rest near the exit to wait for the next tour guide. Meanwhile, I grabbed a quick lunch from the kiosk stationed nearby.

For the second part of the tour, we had an American guide who led us to the roman forum. He told us several stories of the palatine hills as well as the roman forum. One interesting thing I learnt was that purple colour in structures dring those ancient times came from snails! Imagine the amount of snails used to build those large purple columns. After the guided tour ended, we had the full freedom to spend all the time we want in the roman forum.

After the visit, I decided to try and find my way to the famous catacombs, where many Jewish were buried. Unfortunately, I was not too sure of which bus stop to alight at and ended up going all the way to the terminal and back. On the way, I checked the website and found that it's closed on Wednesdays. Blur me, just gotta skip the visit today then.

Instead, I decided to head to the baths of caracalla, which was the largest ancient spa in Rome. Paid for the entrance fee and walked around inside. However, I was not really impressed with the sights of the ruins. It seems like not much of the ruins were left and several statues had been moved to several museums, e.g. the archaeological museum in Naples that I had visited.

After the short visit, I headed back to hostel to catch the free dinner at 8pm. Apparently, the hosts serve free dinner once a week with a purpose of gathering everyone together. It certainly feels like fun to interact with more people, rather than just my room-mates.

After dinner, quite a number of us went to a bar near the colosseum area. In total, there were 10 guys and 2 gals who went for the chill out session in a bar. However, not everyone left the bar at the same time. I left with 2 other guys at around 1am+ but there were already some who had left even earlier. We managed to hop on to the right night bus service. There was no bus conductor and I didn't see anybody validating their tickets, so I guess we had a "free" ride. The bus stopped quite near the Basilica San Paolo metro station and we walked about 15mins back to hostel and retired for the night.