WHEN IN ROME
(an excerpt from my book From London to Cairo)

A Tale of Two Brothers
The symbol for Rome is a milking wolf. I learned the reason for this when I visited The Time Elevator; a virtual reality ride that brings people back in time to reenact the history of Rome.
Roman myth tells the story of a priestess who was required to remain a virgin but gave birth to twin boys instead. The Emperor ordered them to be destroyed. A soldier took them out to the forest but could not bear to kill them himself so he left them for the wolves. A mother wolf adopted the boys and they grew strong. When they became men, they decided to start a village but could not agree on which hill to build it. Unable to find a compromise, one brother killed the otherthen founded Rome.

Nice storyeh? I guess this set the stage for Rome to become a nation of conquerors.

Fresh off the Train
I arrived in Rome in the early afternoon and set off to look for a cheap hotel with a guy I met on the train. John is from Boston and had flown to Venice to take part in a marathon. He had some time to kill and decided to visit Rome to see the coliseum. He was in his late twenties, very handsome and one of the most scatterbrained people I have ever met. I loved him right away. He turned out to be a very amusing person to hang out with.
After walking around for an hour and finding no vacancies at any of the hotels, we finally stopped in at a tourist information office to elicit help. The friendly girl at the office managed to find me a great hotel room for a reasonable price in the area while John chose to stay in a hostel not far from my hotel.

Roman Coliseum
The first night we decided to walk to the Coliseum. The hotel gave me a great map of Rome with big pictures of all the monuments. The walk took a long time because we stopped at every food establishment along the way so John could feed his insatiable appetite for Italian foodI wondered if he would ever get full.
Finally we caught our first glimpse of the coliseum sitting at the end of a busy street, the home of gladiators and emperors, and a piece of living history. Wow! This was incredible!
Construction on the Coliseum started in 70 AD and ten years later Titus opened it. The opening ceremonies and games lasted for 100 days during which an astounding 5000 wild animals were put to death. The Coliseum had a capacity of 70,000 spectators who came to see everything from gladiator combats to wild

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