Overheating

Sunday 9th August 2015

Rome

Jen and Andrew had decided to have a morning off sightseeing, so Claire, Kim and I set off to see some of the ancient attractions of Rome - the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. I soon began to suspect that maybe Jen and Andrew knew something I didn't, because it was unbearably hot. I had struggled with the heat the previous day, but had just about coped with the aid of air conditioning and shade, which we managed to find enough of. Today seemed a hotter day with no cool respite in sight.

The queues at the Colosseum rivalled those from the previous day, but despite the fact that we had prebooked tickets, we still had to stand in the same queue to get in. As the Colosseum was definitely on the must see list, and as we'd parted with money in advance, we had no choice but to join the queue and wait our turn. The Colosseum was a pretty amazing sight, from inside and outside, and I just wished it was 10 degrees cooler and less busy, as we didn't stay as long as we'd have liked to in better conditions.

We had lunch in one of the few nearby restaurants, which had mediocre food, poor service, and awful toilets, and then went for a look at the Roman Forum, which was included in our Colosseum ticket price. In hindsight, I should have stayed in the mediocre restaurant (or found a better one) as the only thing I can remember about the Forum was seeing 3 parakeets and feeling hotter that I've ever been in my life or ever hope to be again. I'm still unsure whether the parakeets were a heat induced hallucination or not, as no one else saw them. I really don't know how Kim and Claire were coping with the heat.

We ended up cutting our visit short (I think) and Claire and I went back to the apartment so I could cool down. This was after Claire refused to let me go back alone because she was worried about me getting back safely. I'm sure I've faced worse dangers than Italians in the past but she was having none of it.

The afternoon consisted of me sleeping for 3 hours and Claire going back out. Not very interesting really for blogging purposes, and I won't write about what Claire did because we did it again together the next day.

The only things I can say in my defence are that a) I have developed a cold since arriving which I think made me feel worse, and b) it was 38 degrees centigrade.

When everyone had cooled down later we all went to a nice little restaurant nearby with air conditioning where they were selling a litre of wine for €8!

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