If you were raised in North America in the 70's, you might remember eagerly plunging your dirty hands down to the bottom of the Kellogg's cereal boxes to pull out the "Seven Wonders of the World" cards.  Tony the Tiger at the Taj Majal or Egyptian pyramids, the Fruit Loops bird nosing a Greek acropolis or Stonehenge.  In an age before internet, it gave us a precious window on the greater world - yes mom, those Apple Jacks you let me eat may not have nourished my body much, but just may have nourished the budding wanderlust that fuels this life.

So when given a single afternoon and night in Rome, I followed my nose (it always knows) straight to the Colloseum.  It smelled like Fruit Loops and tasted like an old friend that had been waiting for me for 50 years (plus another 2,046 years before the Kellogs marketing team brought it to my awareness.) Another puzzle piece of my childhood fallen into place, and every bit as World-Wonderful as Toucan Sam had promised.

As I don't think I succeeded in conveying in my Living the Legends of Ireland post, part of the amazement of travelling isn't so much seeing new things as seeing things you grew up only hearing or reading about.  It's like Carl Jung's concept of tapping into the Collective Unconscious - we don't learn things, just remember them from the great knowledge base of humanity. "So that's what the Colosseum or Machu Pichu or... actually looks like!" we exclaim as we greet an ancient monument like an old friend.