We missed the Pope on Easter though we did watch a little of the via di cruce on Vatican TV. It all started with waking up to an Easter Egg hunt out on our fun private deck that this place has!
Here in Roma we kept seeing these giant eggs everywhere. So the Easter bunny delivered to our family as well.
They’re not actually as bad as I thought they would be and come with a fun toy.
Next up, no church today because of General Conference. But that didn’t start until 18.00 (we’re all on 24 hour clock here) so we had a bit of time. So we piled into our sweet ride and drove down through the awesome Roman roads and found a free parking spot right on the Tiber River.
And guess what else? Today is the first Sunday of the month and that means everything is FREE! Wahoo! So we walked to the forum to see Palatine hill and to see the forum one more time.
And can you guess what we saw on our way? Take a look:
Is that the colosseum? No! That there is a fake colosseo if I ever saw one. It was an old theater known as Marcello Theater. Apparently the top is a palace and you can’t go in. This is probably what the colosseo had going on for a while too until they stripped down the medieval additions. I tell you a lot of cool stuff was ruined by those Middle Ages.
Finally we made it to Capitolini Hill. This was the big hill where the super important Temple of Jupiter stood. It was the capital of the whole world and where the word “capital” comes from.
Apparently the capitolini Musei were only free today to Roman citizens as we could not get in without paying and we just didn’t want to do that today. So on we walked and made a few of our own statues.
We then headed into the forum. Free for everyone. I love this place and could have spent hours and hours here. We saw some of our old favorites like the temple of Antoninus and Fausta. Antoninus loved his wife so much that when she died he made a Temple to her and made her a god. I think I’ll probably do this for Trudie too but I’m pretty sure she’ll outlive me. 
Then we made it to the house of the Vestal Virgins and walked by what used to be their courtyard.
Then it was time to go up to Palatine hill. This was a hill where the rich people lived and eventually was just the home of the emperor. It was huge and is where our word “palace” comes from. We skipped all the other cool landmarks in the forum cause ‘been there/done that’. Here are splendid views of the forum and stuff.
So pretty… and of course, all ruined. Mostly by people in the Middle Ages. I love just imagining what used to be here. So brutal. So organized. I kept thinking about the galactic empire in Star Wars. Maybe Emperor Palpatine was on to something. Think of all the cool things you can build when you can exploit the people you conquer.
From there we walked around the ruins of the palaces and then headed down to the Circus Maximus. This is where big chariot races were held. We ran our own race.
We were hoping to end our loop at the Boca de la Verita. An old manhole cover that has a mouth on it. If you stick you hand in it and don’t tell the truth it bites off you hand. But the line was huge! And we don’t stand in lines. So instead we sound some old stump with a face carved in it. That was good enough.
Then we piled back into our sweet ride and headed home. We had our Easter Feast! Grandpa Spaghetti, fruit salad, normal 🥗 and then it was time for conference!
Not a bad day.
Tomorrow we start school and work. We are also thinking we are getting a bit tired of Rome so we will see about leaving this house early and heading out to the country after our weekend down south. Hopefully we will finally know how the washing machine works before then.
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