Rome

"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, Rome is the light."
--Maximus Decimus Meridius



With only two and a half days in Rome, we had to carefully budget our time in order to make it to all of the critically important sites this city has to offer. Naturally, we spent the first afternoon at the "Time Elevator" theme ride. Since I went to public school, history was not a mandatory offering. Nevertheless, I somehow made it through Mr. Hendricks' Area Studies class with an A, recovering from an embarrassing incident in which I was asked in front of the whole class what Lenin's first name was. I still maintain that "Love me do" had as much if not more of an impact on Western Civilization as the Communist regime in Russia. The Time Elevator was just the thing I needed to brush up on my Roman History and prepare me for the sights of the next couple days. Like any good documentary, it contained lots of fictional narrator type characters for comic relief and to keep you interested and entertained. I could tell that all the other members of the audience (most of whom were about 5 years old) appreciated this as much as I did. After getting a good introduction to Roman history, we proceeded to hammer out the Vatican, Colosseum, Forum, Rostrum, Senate, Mamartine Prison, Pantheon, Temple of Julius Caesar, and the Arch of Constantine. It was quite an education. For example, after his "grand exit" from St. Peters, the Holy Father was whisked away in a vehicle known as the Pope-mobile. I'm not making this up. Can you please tell me why no one has capitalized on this theme for a Bruce Willis movie complete with its own line of action figures? "Your eminence, the jihadists are angry with the remarks in your speech. We must flee. To the Pope-mobile!!" Then they would have the Snoop-Dogg soundtrack playing as he rappels down from the tower into the vehicle, which would be a slightly modified jet turbine version of the H2.