Knowing that we would be running out of typical "touristy" things to do near the end of our 5 days in Rome we thought we should plan a day trip somewhere. We had thought of Pompeii, Pisa, and a few others, but all of them were a few hours away, and we didn't want to invest that kind of travel time into 1 day, so we decided on going to Ostia Antica.
Ostia Antica is the original port of Rome, only a 30 minute train ride away. It sat, 2000 years ago, at the "Ostia" or "mouth" of the Tiber river. Over the years Ostia enjoyed great success as a port, and as a large settlement for the everyday working man. However, within a few centuries, the mouth of the River changed directions and ended up a few kilometres north of Ostia Antica. A new port was built, and Ostia was largely abandoned. Thankfully though, it became buried with a few metres of silt and clay, which persevered much of its original structures, so it basically an entire city still intact!
Ostia had a road, paved with the typical large grey rocks Romans usually built roads with, and this road actually went straight into Rome. You can still see of the original wear patterns and ruts in the rocks caused from carts that were used on road back in its prime.
The tour took us until mid afternoon, after which we caught the train back, and got cleaned up for dinner.
We had actually planned to have a quick dinner and make it an early night, but after dinner we decided to do a walk up the main street towards the Colosseum, and noticed that the road was blocked off to cars. We had forgotten that night Rome was having their very first "Notte dei Fori", or "Night at the Forum." Rome is eventually trying to close off, permanently, the main street and make it pedestrian only traffic, with lots of street performers and entertainers, and tonight was a trial run.
We didn't stick around too much at first because we wanted to go get gelato and sit at the Trevi Fountain for a little while first, so we went to do that for an hour.
...and on my way there I tried my first Red Bull.
By the time we arrived back at the crowded forum it was packed! There must have been over 100,000 people there, but we made our way to one of the circus acts, and watched that until the finished. Once they were done, however, it was even more congested, and to add to the mess, there were a few thousand protesters there making a scene, because they wanted to bring awareness to their opposition to some new landfill Rome is building. Because of this debacle, the police were there blocking the roads, so we had find a long way around them, which was equally congested, and took us near an hour to walk the normally 15 minute route back to the B&B. It was an interesting night, and we were only too glad to go to sleep!
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