Our Roman Holiday Parte Tre

This was our last day in Rome. We had to head back to the airport because our plane left for Ethiopia at midnight but that left us plenty of time to see our last few sites in Rome.

Sleeping Beauty to Fashionista

Lily caught on to the fact that it's all about fashion in Rome and hammed it up a bit for the local Romans while Andrew put our baggage in storage at the hotel we just checked out of so we didn't have to haul it around with us all day.

We weren't quite sure what sites we wanted to see on our last day so we just hopped on the Metro down to a stop we hadn't been to and then wandered around until we found ourselves at the Baths of Caracalla.

I wish more than anything that I could have seen this place in it's time. It must have been amazing with all of the great architecutre and detailed flooring. Oh and of course all of the bathing and steaming.

The Baths of Caracalla, the second largest baths complex in ancient Rome, were built between 212 and 219 A.D. by the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, better known by his nickname Caracalla. By the 3rd century A.D. the Romans had built many baths, in Rome and elsewhere, and had acquired great skill in designing functional, fully integrated complexes. The water supply and drainage system, in particular, required careful planning to ensure an adequate flow to and from the numerous hot and cold basins: it has been calculated that the baths used 15-20,000 cubic meters of water per day. The baths were fed by a branch of the Aqua Marcia aqueduct, which brought pure water to Rome from springs in the hills near Subiaco, over 90 km away. The water flowed into a huge cistern, divided into 18 separate chambers for easy maintenance and with a total capacity of 10,000 cu. m. From here it went by gravity flow through pipes underneath the gardens to the main building. Inside the main building a complicated distribution system carried the water directly to the cold pools or to boilers over wood fires where it was heated for the warm and hot baths.

These guys knew how to Relax!

On one side of the site you see all of the ruins of the baths and then on the other there are all of the beautiful gardens with trees, grass and an ivy covered stone wall.

After this amazing place we meandered back to our hotel to eat and get our luggage. We decided to go back to the first restaurant we had been to when we first came to Rome and have another fabulous meal.

The waiter remembered us and was so pleased and happy he just had to pick Lily up and give her a squeeze.  Then after dinner we found ourselves in another courtyard with some pigeons and Leah and Lily were enjoying themselves by running and chasing them. Also in the courtyard were these two Italians getting there picture taken by a third Italian anyway they saw the girls and then asked if they could get a picture with the girls. So of course I let them, all the time thinking how funny is this! I couldn't help but snap a picture too.

We then had to head back to the airport via the train and it wasn't long before we were back on the plane headed to Ethiopia.