Sunday 17th: Colosseo, wandering around, castle, getting lost

I woke up late. I had a sleep in. I'm starting to lose my energy to wake up early and fill my day with things. I feel like maybe I'm letting myself or someone else down by not being active enough. But I think I just have to go with it.

I decided to see the coloseum first. I spent the day wandering around looking at stuff.

There is a big parade today. I got here at the end of 'culture week'. It is also some kind of significant number of years since the unification of Italy, so they are celebrating this.

During culture week entry to all the government run things is free. So I got into the Coloseum for free. It is good. But we still had to line up so that we could get our free ticket so that we could give it to a guy to rip in half... Culture week is a good time to go. I spoke to someone in my hostel who says that he was also in Florence during culture week and things there were also free. He saw the David sculpture for free.

I left the Colosseum and walked down this big main street. It's closed off from cars today.

The Peruvian pan-pipers are keeping the giant hamsters away.

These people think it's good to play some jazz here. There are also lots of statues along this street, seen on the right in this photo. I don't know if they're original or not...

Lots of ruins everywhere.

"let me help you to better hold your gun". "thankyou".

I went in this museum. They had some cool maps where the mountains are shown in three dimension.

Some views from the top of this museum.

I saw a sculpture cast of something like this in the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Then I saw a real one in Paris. Now there is this other real one in Rome. Strange. There is also a second one of these in Rome that I later saw.

Rome has lots of churches scattered about that are nice to go inside.

This is the museum i was just inside. I think that Italians don't like this building because they think it is too new and tries to be part of the old type of architecture. It's only 200 years old.

Lots of beggars in Roma.

Another church. This one has a blue ceiling. Interesting.

An obelisk and the Pantheon.

At first I thought that someone had stuffed some clothes and left it there. Then I realised that there is just someone sitting inside... There are lots of people in Rome who try to ask for money in various ways.

Inside the Pantheon. It's quite nice.

I thought this building looked really nice with the plants growing over it.

I went toward this castle thing. I wanted to get to the Vatican as early in the week as possible since it's leading up toward Easter and I seem to think that the crowds will gradually grow larger as the days continue. This castle is slightly to the east of the Vatican, so I'm making my way there.

I need a toilet. 'WC' designates the existance of a toilet. I've just learned that WC stands for 'water closet'.

The toilet is closed. NOOO! I have to go into the castle. Luckily it's free.

In the centre of the castle is a big circular walkway which gradually climbs higher.

At the top is some nice seating and plants growing over things.

View of vatican.

River Tiber

Part of the castle.

I was a bit late to get into the Vatican and all of that. So I just had a little look at the outside.

I thought it might be nice to walk back through some gardens, but unfortunately they seemed to be closed. I ended up walking along some kind of street with no sidewalk. It was strange.

I found some others. I think they were German. They were very confused like me. It didn't seem like we should be here at all.

This tree is half pink and half green. A little after this picture I realised that I was quite lost. I had some idea of where I  was, but I was disoriented and I couldn't work out which direction I should walk in since the sun had gone down and I had nothing to orient myself against.

I eventually found my way back.

I got back to the hostel. In the hostel was a new guy who is Italian. He was involved in some kind of business of importing things like office equipment. But the economic crash meant that he has lost his job and now has to work by walking around neighbourhoods trying to get people to change their electricity plan. He is quite a charismatic person and has a lot of things to talk about. There is also a guy from Netherlands who is an architect. There is also a guy from Canberra in Australia.