Roaming around Part III

Now walking back past Piazza Venezia we realized that the massive palace was open to the public, noticing the small people at the top looking down on us, well probably not us in particular but I thought that the view would be nice to see. I was dead tired by this point but nonetheless powered through and climbed the stairs. There was a picture of the building in my first post of Rome of the huge white building here is a picture of me on the stairs getting ready to climb up. (Whilst researching for this post we discovered that the entire palace complex is in fact a singular monument, possibly the most excessive one ever built, that honours the first king of a unified Italy. It is the Altare della Patria, Rome's best lesson in overdoing it shy of the Vatican itself.)

Inside there were a few exhibits, when we got around to the top I noticed that there were still people above us. Around the corner there was a lift that you had to pay to go up in for 7 Euros to ascend up another 100 metres. We didn't go up, I don't believe it is really worth it but then again I didn't go. There are just a lot of other places in the city of you trek up a hill you can get one magnificent free view.

One of the locations on the map was a museum that sounded really cool, when we arrived at the Palazzo Caffarelli Clementino there was a huge opening. Next the Musei Capiolini I was a bit disinterested since it was parchments, letters and scroll written for the Vatican and every piece has a very long read next to it. Having to muscle through the masses to get to it wasn't really my thing, after several rooms of this we were lead into an area with more Roman statues that have been decapitated or cut in half at the torso. Something we both had already seen a lot of today. So we side stepped the rest of it to get our fill at the Dali museum.

Romulus and Remus - this story is very rad.

When we arrived for the Dali exhibit the line was uber long, like really long. Our Roma Passes didn't let us skip the queue so we would have to stand around and wait like everyone else, if my legs already hadn't been giving out by this point after the climb up many stairs I might have waited. Until next time Salvador Dali we will meet again.

While walking across town to our next unknown destination we came across the Circus Maximus, I couldn't even begin to tell you all about this area. After reading the whole wiki page on this area a lot more than Roman races were held here.

The sun is about to set we need to find a nice place to watch the sunset, Italian romantics should be flocking to these areas by now. Got a little lost for direction (since there are absolutely no signposts we just followed the incline of the land until we ended up in the right area) but eventually we made it to the top of Aventine Hill.

The beginning of the sunset on Aventine Hill.

We somehow got around to the back streets coming down the hill and saw a queue for a door that doesn't open, now what are these people doing? (Apparently it's a keyhole you can look through for a miniaturised view of Rome, sounds highly thrilling and given that there was a queue we decided to skip this particular attraction.)


Instead, we got ourselves lost in the fancy residential district that makes up the rest of Aventine Hill, finally making it back down to ground level with rumbling bellies. We tried our luck in a local pizzeria but their menu was distinctly underwhelming, so had our first foray onto the Roman bus system instead, catching a ride back to the Colosseum district (the bus system is crazy and no-one ever seems to buy tickets from the auto-machines on every vehicle). Finally back in a nightlife centre we found a place that sold Gnocchi, which Jen was after. This particular gnocchi was doused in pesto and quite tasty, albeit not the best one we would have whilst in Rome.

The Colosseum is even more impressive by night.

Bellies full and feet tired, we hopped on the metro and made our way home for the night.

Props to the Roman Metro people for not painting over this instantly.