Rome: The mini-series pt.3 (the finale)

The Rome mini series ends with a firey explosion at a castle on the banks of the river. There's mystery and intrigue as an ancient coded trail is unlocked (OK, I shouldn't write a blog entry while drinking wine, the first bit about the firey finale was true at least).
Continuing my plans to run in as many cool and interesting locations as possible during our trip, I started this morning's run at St Peter's Bascillia (which is precisely 102 of my steps from our front door), over the river, past Piazza Venezia and a lap of the Colosseum as a turnaround point. It felt a little surreal like my Eiffel Tower turnaround point a few weeks ago. After so many long and boring runs in the same Melbourne areas it just doesn't feel real to be jogging around such landmarks. It was a fairly simple 6km run, though as I started late after a sleep-in, it was already 29 degrees on my return stretch at just past 10am.
After sorting out how to mail back home another 8kgs of the finest junky souvenirs my hard-earned Euros can buy, we all headed off to the Colosseum this time. We reluctantly took the same bus company on their long-winded circuit of Rome, but gave up and started to walk when we were an hour into the trip and only 3/4 of the way there (silly bearing in mind it took me 16 mins to run there earlier in the day). To anyone else planning a trip to Rome, I recommended getting a hop-on bus company brochure because it's a good way to score a free map. Then use the free map to walk around the centre of the city to all of the attractions. All of the main sites are close by foot and you'll see a lot more wandering the streets.
The hot sun was scorching and made the trip a little hard work (yes, I know those suffering the cold in Melbourne will have no sympathy), but we still had a great time at the Colosseum. I'm not sure about the accuracy of my MCG comparisons, because the kids were left with some weird impression of lions trying to tackle gladiator footballers (see, not that different to AFL).
As we're reaching the point in the trip where we need a few easy days as a family to recharge for the final stretch, we caught the bus back home to give the kids an afternoon break. But breaks are for kids ... I still had more exploring to do and a couple more sites on the Angels & Demons trail to knock off (now completed). I reckon I walked 15kms from what I can figure on the map, by completing a full circuit of the city area past all of the main landmarks by foot. The kids have done a marvellous job to maintain such a pace for 5 weeks, but it was also good to power around the city by myself for three hours as well to spend more time at key spots.
Returning back to the apartment, we all then headed straight out again to catch some fireworks at

Castel Sant'Angelo which is practically down the end of our street. Now I won't go on about the significance of this site in the Dan Brown fictional book, but it was pretty cool watching the famous

castle 'explode' with fireworks in the evening. The show went on for about an hour, and while we have no idea what the fireworks were in aid of, we'll just have to safely presume the Romans were keen to farewell us and make sure we left the country.
The Italian part of our journey was awesome even though Italian service was fairly average. In the morning we take a flight to Amsterdam to meet up again with our Dutch friends Sofie, Daan and Paul at their house (they should be happy with the Dutch winning the 'foozball' today and progressing to the quarter finals in the World Cup).