We had tickets for an 11:00 tour of the Domus Aurea.  As we begin our walk there we can hear music blasting and an announcer and we remember it’s the day of the Rome Marathon.  Using Google maps to guide us we walk about 15 minutes to a dead end.  We have no idea where the entrance to the large park is.  We keep walking, asking help along the way and we arrive at 1 minute til 11:00.  That’s how you turn a 15 minute walk into a half hour.  In case you ever go, the entrance is across from the Colosseum and it looks like this:

The hour and a half tour of the archeological project  is really fascinating.  We have to wear hard hats and it’s very cold because it is all way under ground.  Domuns Aurea is the huge urban villa complex (around 200 acres)  built by the emperor, Nero around the year 60 AD.  The guide is a bit hard to understand but we get the gist of what she’s telling us.  We see layers of walls and frescoes.  There is one well preserved mosaic floor and several decorative features remain.  Amazing that anything is still here because in was all filled in to make Trajan’s Baths about 5 years later.  The baths were built literally on top of the complex and now it is a park.

It was hard to get decent photos but this one kind of give you an idea:

The best part was a virtual reality presentation for about 10 minutes.  I had never experienced VR before and it was so cool!

Coming out the streets are filled with runners and fans. 

We decide to walk to the Circo Massimo farmer’s market. Couldn’t resist this beautiful artichoke:

It was super crowded as was everything in Rome because of the Marathon.  Orange shirts and orange back packs are everywhere.  We bought a few things, cheese and salami and left to go home.  The walk should have been about 15 minutes but because of all the blocked streets it took almost an hour to get home.  Ken said we walked about a 10K–our personal Rome Marathon.  We had a little feast of a snack on the stuff we’d gotten at the market.

We went out for a pre dinner stroll all through the Monti neighborhood. I took this shot of some windows:

We were tempted by gelato but I really felt like cooking.  Dinner came out great and we drank a nice bottle of Prosecco we got a the supermarket.

Just before we went to sleep Ken said “another successful day!” and I totally agree.