If it is thursday we must be in Rome

Yep, we went to the colusseum. Outside men wearing gladiator outfits were available for photos, I think this one must have wandered off somewhere.

The Colusseum is awesome. Huge, bigger than even I anticipated, and so atmospheric. I could have spent all day wandering around letting my imagination run riot. In this photo you can see the area which would have been below the arena floor. Those were the rooms where the gladiators and the animals and the christians were kept before the big show. See the little arches at the outer rim, they were the entrances to the elevators (a bit like dumb waitors, using a pulley system). The animals would come out of these straight onto the floor of the arena, via the square entrances on the left of the pic. There were over 50 of these. Part of the arena floor has been re-constructed so that we can make sense of the space. Over 55,000 spectators would come to enjoy the entertainment. The tourists help to make sense of the sheer size of this place.

This isn't a view you often see of the building, it shows how it was built, there were 76 entrances to allow the excited hoardes in.

Stand with your back to the (back of the) colusseum and this is the view. Incredible columns and archways.

Another view taken with my back to the Colusseum. It is like a church chopped in half, see the dome?

I have to share a couple of pics I took of rather odd stone carvings.

This one was one of many in a typical Roman courtyard. I wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night :

This quartet were on a plynth in the Vatican.

We visited the Trevi Fountain and threw a couple of coins in, in the hope that we can go back again one day. The Vatican was amazing, with inspiration everywhere and the Sistine Chapel is everything that I expected it to be. I have few pics from inside the Vatican as our guide whisked us through and there were too many people around to get good pics.