Rome: Colosseum

I have been travelling again, this time to Rome to spend a long weekend with middle daughter who is studying in northern Italy. A minor milestone was that at the ripe old age of 58 this was the first time I had ever flown alone - whenever I have travelled abroad before it has always been with friends or family. We crammed a lot into three days, so I'm going to split the trip into a few separate posts. First up, the Colosseum.

This wasn't my first visit to Rome, but it was the first time I have been inside the Colosseum. We hit very lucky, as it turned out the dates we had booked were during Italy's Week of Culture, when entrance to all government owned sites and museums was free. The Colosseum and the Forum share a joint ticket, and the queues to buy tickets on the day are lengthy at any time. We half expected the queue for free tickets would be so long we might have to give up the idea of visiting and go somewhere else but it all worked out, in part thanks to a public transport strike (not unusual for Rome!). As the metro and buses were only running during the morning rush hour, we decided to make an early start, catch the metro to the Colosseum and save ourselves an hour long walk from our hotel. This meant we arrived at the Colosseum at 8.15, fifteen minutes before it was due to open. This was the queue when we joined it. 

Once it opened the queue was pretty fast moving and we made it through security, collected our free ticket and were into the building by 8.45. There was a slight hiccup getting through the airport-style security as daughter had forgotten she had a corkscrew/bottle-opener/penknife in her jacket pocket. Oops! Fortunately they let us in.

My knowledge of Roman history is pretty fuzzy, so I can't pretend I appreciated the history of the building on anything more than a superficial level but it is certainly an extraordinary site and well worth making the effort to go inside. In its heyday it seated 50,000 spectators at a squash.

Obligatory photo of myself at the Colosseum. Rome weather in March is changeable, and often pleasantly warm in the sun and cold in the shade. Hence I was wearing odd layers including a shower proof pack-a-mac and scarf. We were lucky with weather and didn't get any rain. 

This was the best view of the arena I found, though getting to the front of the balcony meant struggling through quite a scrum of people trying to take selfies with this backdrop.

This external view was taken as we walked across from the Colosseum to the Forum. I almost managed to get the entire building into my shot. The line of people queueing to get in was pretty long by this time.

100 Books for 2018: 21 to 25

Book 21 - A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived (Adam Rutherford) [Audio]
Before I listened to this book the science of genetics was an area of which I was profoundly ignorant. I was interested in the subject matter and felt I understood a lot more thanks to this the book, but sadly I have now forgotten much of it and have been mostly left with just a slightly random collection of interesting genetic facts that have stuck in my brain. The book is in two parts - the first about how the human genome evolved, and the second about what our genome means for the people we are now. It is well written and makes the science comprehensible, but I probably need to read it again for it to really sink in. Possibly reading rather than listening while driving would have helped as I could have re-read any sections I didn't quite get first time round.
**** 4 stars

Book 22 - The Accidental Diplomat (Paul Knott)
I think this was a 99 pence Amazon Kindle purchase. The author is a Yorkshireman from Hull who more or less accidentally stumbled into working for the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service. His job took him to a series of British embassies, mainly in the former USSR and Eastern Europe. An easy and enjoyable read - more 3.5 stars than 3.
*** 3 stars

Book 23 - Quidditch Through the Ages (J.K.Rowling)
British schools used to give out £1 vouchers for World Book Day, and each year a few short books by top children's authors were written specially to be sold for £1 so that kids could get a book without needing to top up the voucher. I am pretty sure this was originally one of these World Book Day specials. A worthy voucher spend, but much as I love J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter, it was a bit too much detail of the rules and history of quidditch for me.
*** 3 stars (just!)

Book 24 - Educated (Tara Westover) [Audio]
Tara Westover was the daughter of a survivalist family living in Idaho. For Tara erratic home education alternated with work in her father's scrapyard business from a young age. His paranoia extended to avoiding doctors, so even after severe accidents family members were patched up by her herbalist mother. One of her brothers was violent and abusive. Tara, however, had an inbuilt desire to learn. She finally managed to attend college and was eventually awarded a scholarship to study at Oxford. Her story had me gripped from start to finish. American gun culture is incomprehensible to pretty much everyone this side of the Atlantic, so this was an insight into a completely alien world.
***** 5 stars

Book 25 - The Hard Way Up: The Autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, Suffragette and Rebel (edited by Geoffrey Mitchell)
Many of the suffragettes and suffragists who fought for votes for women in Britain came from wealthy and well educated families, but there were also a number of working class women who became prominent in the movement. The best known of these was Annie Kenney, a Lancashire mill girl who was close to the Pankhurst family. Hannah Mitchell was part of the same circle. She was born in Derbyshire, had very little formal education and at 13 was apprenticed as a dressmaker. She ran away from home at 14 and moved to Bolton, where she worked as as seamstress and educated herself. Although married with a young son she became increasingly involved with both the Independent Labour Party and the Women's Social and Political Union, also working with the Pankhursts. After the First World War she became a city councillor in Manchester and was appointed a magistrate. Her autobiography is simple retelling of her life story without a trace of self-pity, though she was rightly indignant at the hardship endured by women like herself, who were expected both to work and contribute to the household income, but also to take on the entire responsibility for domestic tasks.
**** 4 stars