Day III in Rome

What does one do for fun the day after Christmas in Rome?  Well, you start by sleeping in a bit.  Then after breakfast, you hop a bus to the Colosseum.  I took a quick walk up to the square, where I was told I could by bus tickets.  I got 4 one way tickets.  The concierge told me which bus to take.  I couldn't read the stops, so I ended up taking us off a few stops early.  It ended up OK.  We got to start our day with a walk around the far side of the Roman Forum.  It was warms, so I was wandering around in a T-shirt.  I noticed a lot of the European tourist where in full winter parkas, many with fur lined hoods.  They probably thought I was nuts.
     We walked along the outside of the Colosseum to get the lay of the land.  We looked into getting tickets on our own.  The line was astoundingly long.  We chatted up a few tour agencies.  We finally selected one.  After a bit of delay from the promised start time, we started off.  The Skip The Line feature, which the Tourism Office of Rome has embraced, is genius.  They work with the tour companies to help promote sight seeing.  We got a 45 minute tour of the Colosseum.  They we had an hour to roam around on our own.  We got some great pictures in there, including our Ground hog's day spectacular.  I like that the boys got the history associated with the landmark.  It is something they will remember for years to come.  Once our free time was up, we proceeded outside to regroup for a tour of the Roman Forum.  We walked up Palatine Hill.  We got the whole history of the founding of Rome, the significance of the Roman Forum.  We got to see the sites of the Temple of Venus, the Roman Senate, and the palace.  We walked through the rest of that until it closed and we were kicked out.
     We ended up walking all the way back home.  The boys didn't complain once.  We tried to catch a bus, but is was brutal.  We got hit by a hustler hawking some Jamaican trinkets.  We spent a lot of time trying to dissuade him.  We saw more ruins on the way home.  That night we just ate by the hotel.   We being Demi and me.  The boys were really tired from the walking.  We found a nice little restaurant called Vito's.  We ate really well, as usual.  We ordered some pizza's for the boys.  Caz actually slept through until the wee hours of the morning, then ate his pizza.  A sure sign of a productive day.