5. Those emperors, eh?

Today it was sunny as I arrived at the school and at 13:30, when I was all said and done, it was still sunny! Remarkable. Had there been a vendor I'd wanted to part a good deal of cash with to look appropriately Italian, I might have been persuaded to purchase a pair of today's featured sunglasses : icandi by Topperliquidators. The name and the company all sound a bit virtual and terminator-ish to me.

But that Emperor Hadrian, eh? He's a one, isn't he? If he's not throwing up walls or laying down bits of Appian Ways, he's only knocking up huge, great, big colosseum things in the middle of nowhere, isn't he? Well, I say the middle of nowhere, it was on the Appian Way and there was also... erm, er... that was about it at the time. Maybe he'd just sold a smaller city plot and had decided to move out to a larger green-field site where things were a bit cheaper.

Anyway, it wasn't just the kind of colosseum you see dotted about like football grounds in the middle of inner-city housing estates, but the second largest built in Italy after that rather well-known one in Rome, with an integrated gladiatorial school, lions dens and, from the 4th century, a little chapel for Christians about to go to their doom to make peace with their creator in. A load of the marble was also imported from Greece, the local stuff not being quite special enough. Incredible. Yet with all this, it's barely known about and mercifully free from school visits.

As well as being fairly magnificent, even though most of the upper works were plundered in centuries past for the handsome building materials readily at hand, it is also a site of historical importance as it was the starting point for Spartacus' 71BC gladiators' revolt. Thank goodness for the Lonely Planet and its wealth of knowledge.

But let me go on some more. Apart from the upper works, you can stroll about the cavernous tunnels under the arena (you can see me in a tunnel in the picture!). All in incredibly good condition and not-a-little atmospheric. It's easy to imagine the lions being let up through the trap doors and the blood being washed away along the purpose built culverts as injuries were tended to and Oliver Reed (as Proximo) drunkenly stalked the cells.

As luck would have it, when I was there, there was some training going on and I managed to get this close up shot of the end of one gladiatorial contest. Truly thrilling and all for only €2.50! (about £12 at the current exchange rate, I shouldn't imagine)

After missing a train back to Caserta by 4 minutes and waiting an hour for the next train which was then late by 25 minutes, I was unable to get into the Bourbon biscuit palace gardens before they closed. However, I have one morning left, so weather permitting, I'll have a leisurely stroll and beer there tomorrow morning. That is if I don't go on a 'large one' with the examining posse here in Caserta.

Fortunately, I'm not the only examiner in town and so I don't have the mental struggles and anguish, endured by some examiners, of having to find a place to eat and drink by themselves - always a tricky one when you're eating at around 8pm - a full 15 hours or so before it seems anyone else come out to eat. In the picture you can see Jan (why she appears to be edging away from me, I couldn't say) and Kirsty - a kind of new-age therapist with a tendency for having 'bad days' and a retired kiwi literature lecturer respectively. They'd been here a week before I arrived and had got a few good restaurants sussed. I say a few restaurants sussed when in reality there only appears to be two which aren't pizzerias. Still, they do a good deal on the house wine.

On the first night when we all went out for dinner, I don't know who looked more shocked, me when Kirsty said we could share a 1/4 litre of wine between us (250ml between 3!) or Kirsty when I countered that we could start with a litre and see how we got on from there. Anyway, it's been the three of us each night with me knocking back a healthy dose of vino (at €6 for a house litre I do feel it would be rude not to) each time while we exchange examiner 'horror' stories along the lines of:

"Today I went to the examining centre and had to fail everyone!";

"Well when I went they didn't give me a banana!";

"But I was on a tour when my legs fell off and I had to staple them back on just to get to the station because the local liaison wouldn't drive me the 20 yards to get there", etc. etc.

It's out last night together so I might be able to persuade them to have more than half a glass of the house wine. I have high hopes.