I didn't go out to get anything for breakfast; we ate the fruit and bread we had in the apartment, and I continued to make coffee using the supply from La Tazza d'Oro. I woke everyone else up fairly early so that we could get a start on the day before the sun got too fierce.
We walked across the Ponte Sisto and up through rush-hour traffic to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. I had planned to avoid this rather overwhelming street but I went a little too far north in the maze of smaller streets, and to be honest, it was a tradeoff: more exhaust and noise, but wider and safer sidewalks.
We gained Piazza Venezia, worked our way around it, crossed the street at a light, and moved around the base of the Capitoline Hill and down into the Forum shortly after it opened at nine. Already it was unpleasant to spend much time in the sun. We sat down on some marble fragments and pulled out the Oxford Archaeological Guide to Rome. N wanted to go see where Geta's name had been chiseled off the Arch of Septimius Severus by his brother Caracalla after he murdered Geta, but the arch was some distance to the west across a barren open patch.
I sat contemplating the Forum, nearly empty of tourists, while she and the kids went off to look. After a while I saw them returning. A ran ahead to meet me. "How was it?" I asked. She shrugged. "It was okay -- I couldn't really see anything," she said, and added, "Don't tell Mommy."
We hiked east, through the shade of some low trees. The Arch of Titus, through which we had walked on our last visit, was completely cordoned off this time. The book had some drawings of what the buildings might have looked like, and I used them to help the kids fit various standing columns and rubble piles into a more coherent picture.
There were a lot more people around the Colosseum, and a lineup at the ticket office that extended back and up onto the street, quite a distance. I expected our combined tickets would get us in quickly, but it turned out that we had to have each option marked off, and "free" tickets issued. Someone at the groups window did that when I asked, but we hadn't bought tickets for the children at Palazzo Massimo because we were told they were free, and now we learned that there were different rules at each location. We had to buy tickets for the kids, and had to show passports (I convinced them that an Ontario driver's license would do) to get them a reduced rate. Fortunately, the person helping us did this for us as well, and we escaped the dreaded lineup.
Inside there were many people, though perhaps fewer than outside, as it appeared that many tour groups just looked around the outside of the building, and of course there were the usual souvenir touts and people in costume outside. It wasn't crowded, just busy. Z was excited and asked lots of chirpy questions as we moved across a platform in the centre. We could see down into the maze of rooms that had been used for gladiators, slaves, and animals, and at the far end a section of floor covered with sand had been reconstructed, though I suspect not authentically. The one section of seats that had been reconstructed, near the east end, was, according to our Oxford Guide, done incorrectly in the 1930's.
We climbed up to the next level and went all the way around, stopping in the shade on the east side for a water break. As part of our preparations, I carried a 1.5-liter bottle of water from the apartment fridge in a mesh pouch on the outside of the large MEC backpack that served as our day pack.
Inside on the second level was a nice exhibition titled Sangue e Arena ("Blood and Sand"), with artifacts from the Colosseum and other locations showing gladiatorial combats, reconstructions of various parts of the structure, and (the most crowded part, ironically) stairwells down which one could look to see fragments of old Italian movies about the spectacles. I walked around with Z, and she kept finding things she knew about either from our pre-trip readings or from the movie "Spartacus", which we had rented and seen about half of before leaving home.
Leaving the Colosseum, we tried to go up the Palatine hill by the entrance near the Arch of Titus, but succeeded only in taking a long, hot walk up to two churches that were blocked off, with tantalizing glimpses of the paths among the ruins through a few locked gates set in a high wall. We descended again and went around to the entrance on Via di San Gregorio, south of the Colosseum.
Inside, we walked up a long path to the left which curved around and through the ruins of the Baths of Septimius Severus and then to the beginnings of a palace of Diocletian, with a garden laid out in the shape of a stadium, and more baths. We were relying heavily on the Oxford guide; nothing was signposted, and the rest of our books were scant help. From time to time another clump of heat-stricken tourists would wander by, puzzled. We found traces of pavement in what would have been Diocletian's banquet hall. and wandered around the Domus Augusta (another large palace complex), which offered views off the edge of the hill down to the shallow grassy oval which was once the Circus Maximus.
The small Antiquarium had signs about a limited number of people being allowed in at a time, at preset times, but none of the guards seemed to care when we wandered in. There were some nice wall frescoes and traces of elaborate wall decorations ordered by Nero. The basement of the museum was itself an important Iron Age excavation.
Much of the Palatine was blocked off -- we couldn't see anything of the House of Livia, or the House of Augustus; we could only peer down into the opening of the Cryptoporticus, Nero's tunnel, and the Farnese gardens were also closed (not that we would have spent much time there, but a view over the Forum would have been nice). Instead, we headed back. It was about twelve-thirty, and the kids were hot, hungry, and tired. We were nowhere near being able to relieve any of those conditions. (On a subsequent visit to the Forum, Z would look up with scorn and say, "I'm NEVER going to the Palatine Hill again.")
Fortified by the last bits of warm water I had hauled up the hill, the kids rallied, and we retraced our steps down the hill and continued down Via di San Gregorio and then along Via dei Cerchi, which thankfully offered some shade from the long slog along the Circus Maximus. We went past the little Republican temples and around the back of the Theatre of Marcellus.
The restaurant we ate lunch at was right next to the ruins of the Portico d'Ottavia: Da Giggetto, in the Jewish ghetto. The kids finally got to eat suppli al telefono, the deep-fried rice balls with stringy mozzarella inside. N had a deep-fried artichoke (as we entered the restaurant, two women sat there with enormous tubs of water and enormous piles of artichokes, trimming away spikes and leaves at a furious rate). I skipped the primo to have another traditional Roman-Jewish dish, deep-fried brains, zucchini, mushrooms, and artichoke quarters. N had funghi porcino arrosto, and the kids split a plate of risotto alla pescadora. It was all quite good, though I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to order brains again.
We tried to find a famous bakery nearby, but it was closed, so we made our way back over the river and home, stopping to get the kids gelato. There we put our feet up, did a little napping and a little music practice.
In the early evening we went out to try to go to Panattoni / Ai Marmi, a popular pizzeria on Viale Trastevere. But it was closed (I hadn't read my guidebooks clearly enough), and we wandered around the Piazza San Cosimato area for a while before settling on another pizzeria called Ivo. The food at this place was indifferent; the pizzas were quite soggy, though my calzone at least kept some crunch on the top.