“Rome is like a lasagne, made of layers that were built at different eras.” That’s our favorite quote of this trip so far, delivered by our tour guide for the Colosseum underground. Today, we bid adieu to the Eternal City, so we wanted to spend a few minutes sharing our experiences this time around.

The history here is just awe-inspiring. I don’t think I’ve every appreciated it as much as I have this time. When you think about the fact that many of the buildings and infrastructure that are still visible here were built 2,000 years ago, it just blows your mind that we can still walk around in it today. I don’t think I recall ever hearing before that the Colosseum was built in 9 years. That’s incredible, especially when you consider they’ve been working on I-35 in Dallas for at least 30 years.

Our first day, we revisited the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel is a favorite and always something new to discover on that ceiling. This time we learned that the reason the four women on the ceiling look so muscular is because Michelangelo used male models while painting them. And that the male models were real and were standing on the floor of the Sistine Chapel, so he could look down at them then back up at the ceiling to paint.

On Tuesday, we did something we’ve never done before in Rome — the Appian Way. We took an e-bike tour out of town on the famous road and saw several of the original 14 acqueducts that brought water into Rome. These were built between around 300 B.C. and 200 A.D. And they are still looking pretty good in places. Here we are standing in front of one section of one of them – Acqueduct Claudia.

Yesterday, we did a tour of the underground of the Colosseum. This has only been opened to the public for about a year, and it was fascinating to see where the gladiators and animals were kept while waiting to be taken up into the arena to fight. Really interesting history here as well. For instance, did you know that the original fighting at the Colosseum was in the form of ship battles? They would fill the basin of the building with water and have ships in there to fight. Apparently, that wasn’t bloody enough, so they then built the subfloor structure of the Colosseum that remains today, where they would keep animals and people who would be sent up to fight through a series of 62 elevators and trap doors scattered around the arena floor. Here we are standing on the partially recreated arena floor.

Great trip so far. Today we meet up with our Edelweiss tour group and tomorrow we set off south, down the western coast. A few more pics from the last few days ….