THE FORUM

After the Colosseum we walked across the open square and went into Palatine Hill and The Roman Forum- I remember studying about the Forum back in Latin class in high school but I don't think I ever really got it then. But now I do! It basically is the area right next to the Colosseum where they had temple after temple to worship all their Gods- actually it seems that each Caesar just decided that they themselves were Gods and put up tributes to themselves. From a distance it looks like a lot of rubble but as you stop at the remains of each one- and you hear the history about them- you really begin to get a sense of what they were. Carol found this book in the Colosseum gift shop that has overlays on it so you can see what the Forum piece looked like before 2,000 passed by- and now. The only problem was, that it was in Portuguese. But no fear- I found her one in English- and when we were done with the tour, we sat on the remains of some temple and decided to break the seal on the book and have a live look and compare things from the book to what we were looking at- Only problem; I bought the French version! Carol laughed and said, "You're so international now that you can't even RECOGNIZE when something isn't English anymore!" So true- so true-