Avoiding line for the Colosseum, Rome

During the high season, there is always a long line for the ticket to Colosseum. If you are standing in the line, you will see tour guide offering group ticket. The group ticket comes with guided tour and quick access to the Colosseum. This way you can enter Colosseum without spending an hour waiting in the line, which is not atypical during high season. By all means, avoid buying group ticket, unless you are really interested in the guided tour.

What you need to do instead is to head to nearby Palatine Hill. Here is the logic, the Colosseum ticket gives you free entrance for the nearby Palatine Hill, so vise versa is true. Hence you can buy your ticket for the Palatine Hill and get free access to Colosseum. Of course the Hill is much less popular, and hence alomost no line. I did that twice (I was in Rome twice) and during the highest season I have less than 5 people in front of me. 

Now, you can dicth Palatine Hill and head straight to Colosseum. Skip the line and try not to wave your ticket to the exhausted tourists who will waste their hours standing in the line. Palatine Hill is just 3 minute walk from Colosseum, in the Forum area. Just follow the arrow.

As for you who are interested in the guided tour, consider that you can always eavesdrop. Just make sure that you are not too obvious . Think of it as free guided tour, and you can ditch your guide if you don’t like him/her and move to the next one. Smart, isn’t it?

Rome, Italy (10-14 November 2004) – Part 5

Rome (cost per hour)
Flight: €1.00
Hostels: €0.90
Museums: €0.50
Gelato: €0.20
Food: €0.90
Airport Parking: €0.40
Others: €0.10
Souvenirs: €0.00
Total:  €4.00/hour à cheaper than watching a movie with your friend

Rome, Italy (10-14 November 2004) – Part 4

The Spanish Steps. The background says: ‘if you want to give a message, it must be a message of love’, with a picture of M. Gandhi. 

May be that’s why the steps are full with lovers. I also think the guard seems to disallow singles to hang around the steps. I was eating gelato (the n^th for that day) and I was kicked out by the guard. Can’t be the gelato. What can speak a message of love better than a soft ice-cream? 

What a discrimination! I think singles should be allowed to have honey moon as much as homosexuals to have kids.

   

And just like gelato, vacation has to come to an end.

Rome, Italy (10-14 November 2004) – Part 3

You must recognize Basilica San Pietro from its keyhole look alike. The dome was amazing. But if you have a camera, why do you want to enjoy the real thing if you can make a snap-shot with a fancy digi-cam?

Have you ever wondered why people spend only 10 minutes inside the Sistine Chapel, and take pictures of ‘the Last Judgment’ and ‘the Creation of Man’?  I think postcards capture them much better.

If the neck kills you, you are excused. How can you enjoy M’s painting if you have to stare at the ceiling for more than 10 minutes? I still don’t understand why the guards won’t let me lie down on the floor. I can see the paintings much better that way. Besides, a tourist without neck-pain is a happy tourist; a happy tourist will spend more money on gelato and will boost the economy.

I managed to spend 3+ days in Rome without having anybody taking pictures for me (at least none of any worth). Now, if only I have a tripod, then my shooting angle won’t be that limited. Besides, holding a camera still is not my cup of tea.

    

Rome, Italy (10-14 November 2004) – Part 2

The Forum is next to the Colosseum. The workers were on strike on Friday – Friday in the Forum, not Colosseum – it was Thursday for Colosseum.

If Douglas Adams thinks that we follow the Survival-Inquiry-Sophistication evolution (also known as the How-What-Where question): why were the Romans more sophisticated than us? What ever happens with details in architectures? I mean, look at IKEA design: simple and plain, yet loved by many.  Sophistication takes time (imagine: choosing what to wear for a dinner). May be with the advance of technology that saves us so much time (imagine: internet, television), we actually have no time to do anything else. And how can PC save time, compared to typewriter, if MS Word decides to crash.But that’s not important if you have Rick Steve’s guidebook. It tells you have to re-acquire your lost time by skipping one-hour line for Colosseum by buying your ticket in Palatine Hill (3 min walk from Colosseum, in the Forum).

Instead of building Colosseum, we are building boxing ring (to be precise: boxing square) and wrestling octahedron. Or if you are British, you build a football stadium (football: also known as soccer in certain country for unknown reasons). We exchange swords with boxing gloves, spears with folding chairs and lions with Hooligans. Yet, why complain if there are so many people wish to be in my position. Sunny days in Rome, great pizza and to-kill-for gelato (try Del Palma one block north of the Pantheon).

    

Rome, Italy (10-14 November 2004) – Part 1

Thursday and Friday were holidays in Belgium… and one can fly with Ryan Air for about €80 to Roma. And one did…

I love evenings … I think, perhaps, when light lacks, one can easily ignore many imperfections. May be that explains why romanticism is truer when:

I(l_vis)<Ĩ 

Under candlelit or moonlight illumination, flaws hide, resulting in a false sense of beauty. I love evenings. One easily forgets that piles of junks are not beautiful. Under moonlight, assisted by camera tricks, sprinkled with a handful of self-deception, imagination creates a sense of beauty. Not dissimilar with the sense of security one has in the airport.    

(BTW, during my last trip, I was sitting in the Arlanda airport in front of a couple who were cutting cheese with their Swiss pocket knife. They were using it for about half-hour without any attempt to hide it nor were worry about being discovered. No other passengers made any comments; and we are worry about Chinese students studying physics?)