The Colosseum Was Real. My Expectations Weren’t.

You spend years with the Colosseum in your head—a backdrop for textbooks, movies, and half-remembered lectures. Then you stand in front of it, and it’s just stone and sky and a thousand tourists angling for the same photo. I thought I’d feel awe. Instead, I felt small, like I’d been chasing a myth. The ruins are massive, but what hit hardest was the silence between tour groups, the way the sun bakes the dust, the way history feels less like a story and more like an echo you can’t quite catch. I didn’t cry. I didn’t have an epiphany. I just stood there, quietly letting go of every version of the Colosseum I’d carried with me. That was enough. #Travel #TravelExpectations #HistoryVsReality