Day 7: Castel San'Angelo & Gladiator School

Today we headed over to Castel San'Angelo hoping to go inside and see the 3rd century tomb of Emperor Hadrian. It has also been used as a fortress, prison and papal residence over the years and is currently a museum.




Unfortunately, when we arrived there was some sort of labor union meeting going on that closed the facility to tourists today! Too bad, as we had to take the Metro and then quite a long walk from the station to the castle only to find out tourists were not being allowed to go through today. We did have an adventure seeing the famous bridge leading up to the castle, Porta San Angelo, built at the same time and once used for beheading criminals.

On the way back to the Metro we stopped at a great little Italian toy store and found some small items for the kids. Ben paid in Euros for his puzzle and we all had fun looking around.


Then we stopped at an Italian McDonald's just to see what it was like compared to at home and of course to use their clean restrooms, apparently the only one's in Rome-LOL! They had burgers and fries, but also salads with mozzarella balls and olive oil dressing, so very Italiano!



After lunch we headed on another adventure to the other end of the city, out the city wall to a Gladiator School on Appia Antica along the Appian Way. The school was situated off of the ancient coblestone road at the end of a dirt road and was really fun to participate in. When we arrived they gave us all gladiator togas and showed us training moves for agility


and both offensive and defensive sword fighting moves.

Once we had honed our skills we were put to the test in the arena to fight one another for points, first one to 5 won each round and if you stepped out of the "ring" it was an automatic loss. We took turns sparring with various opponents until we had our fill, some were more blood thirsty than others and even used distraction tactics to win matches (not mentioning any names, Aunt Beth!)




Next we tried our hand at knife throwing. We each got 5 tries and Ben won with 4 out of 5 knives sticking in the target.

Stiff Italian espresso was then served to all the adults to warm us up, it was awesome! Next we went inside and got to try on the Gladiator helmets

and were each given an SPQR tag (like military dog tags in the army) and a certificate announcing ourselves as graduates of Gladiator School.



We all passed with flying colors and had a blast learning about the gladiators today. On the way home we shopped in an Italian department store and stopped to pick up things to eat in for dinner tonight. We made homemade past primavera and of course stinky cheese, Italian bread and wine. Yum! To top off the day we watched Gladiator again in it's entirety and are now heading up to bed to get up early for more adventures tomorrow.

Buono sera!