Making it a vacation

We were determined to not run ourselves ragged and actually enjoy our trip. So we decided to sleep in because the only other large attraction we wanted to see was the colosseum.  We didn't plan on sleeping till 1 in the afternoon but we sure did (guess we needed it). On the way we passed the roman forum which was by far Justins's favortie part of Rome so it was picture time again.

We went directly to the colosseum but were bummed that we missed mass at the Vatican (we didn't want to go just see what it looked like with the masses of people exiting.)  We has tickets from the day before so there was no wait at the colosseum.

 A guide or audio guide seemed to be a waste so we just went off what our book and what (ustin remembered from all of his readings.  Also because there were so many tours that any time we stopped to take pictures you could listen to what the tour guide was saying.  Interesting that almost everything we overheard a tour guide saying Justin either told me or we read in our book. Fun fact time: when it was first built all the structures under the stage didn't exist and the wooden stage was removable. At that time they used to fill up the bottom with water (once the stage was removed) and have navy battles.  The area was huge but it didn't seem that you could do a navy battle in it!!

The back part of this picture is a reproduction of the removable stage. Also the brick walkways under the stage were only built later and where not there during the time of the navy battles.

Artist's depiction of what it was like at the colosseum.

When we had enough of seeing the colloseum we went to Trasteverti to walk around. It is a cool district away from all the tourists with locals just going about their lives.  We were close to the island again so stopped in for another amazing gelato.  We were thinking about buying some art so we made our way back to the piazza navona but after looking around with so many choices we decided we couldn't make a decision and left empty handed. After a dinner of roasted chicken and gnocchi we headed home. We passed a wine bar close to home every time but never stopped in, tonight we decided we should.  I had seen these orange drinks everywhere.  Happy hour was a big tradition in Italy and everyone seemed to be drinking them.  So I ordered "the orange drink that everyone always has." I sounded like a dummy but it worked :) It was a drink that is prosecco or white wine campari or aperol and soda water. They also had wifi so we wee able to Skype with mom which was nice.  Then it was off to bed so we could check out tomorrow and make our way to Florence.