Day 22- Ancient Rome

We were up and ready to catch the bus to the Colosseum first thing this morning.

The bus ride went smoothly with no delays, so we were early for our assigned timeslot and were some of the first people at the Colosseum site.

The colosseum is a pretty awesome sight. Unlike a lot of other ancient ruins, it's so well preserved that it's easy to picture its use in ancient times. 

Pat let the kids watch a few minutes of Gladiator (before the really gory stuff) to get an idea of what it may have looked like.

There was a pretty good interpretive display on the second floor of the building. I didn't know that the building was abandoned for so many hundreds of years, even being used as a place to store livestock and as a garbage dump. It's amazing how intact the building still is, and how much restoration work has been done.

Penny had a massive blowout at the Colosseum, naturally on the one day we didn't bring a spare set of clothes. So, while the rest of the family went to a playground up the hill from the Colosseum, Pat and I went on a mission to find a new baby outfit within a 15 minute walk of the park.

After successful acquisition of clean clothes, we went back to the same restaurant that we went to 3 weeks ago when we were in Rome.

Ellis claims that they have the "best pizza ever!". To be fair, she has sampled a lot of pizza on this trip.

The waitress remembered us from last time, including remembering Oscar by name. I guess we're a memorable group.

After lunch we went down to the forum and other ancient ruin sites nearby the colosseum. 

We attempted a kids walking tour of the sites that I had found online, but everyone was running out of steam. The ruins in the forum area are impressive, but definitely tougher to imagine being used in their heyday.

We had a bit of a hiccup trying to catch a bus back to the apartment, but eventually made it back for dinner and some kitchen dancing.

Ellis is in a choir concert the day after we fly back to Canada. One of her songs is Feliz Navidad, so we practiced it together. Penny is now able to dance standing up and is so close to taking a few steps on her own.