The Last Days of Rome

For our last day, Jack and I bought a ticket one on of those hop on/hop off sightseeing buses. We were going on the red one, but the tout gave me the irrits so we went on the green one. Possibly it wasn't as good but all Jack cared about was seeing the Colosseum. In retrospect we could have just caught the metro there and saved ourselves some euros but Jack loves those buses and desperately wanted to sit upstairs. We saw some other sights of Rome but Jack certainly wasn't disappointed in his first glimpse of the Colosseum, even though part of it was clad in scaffolding. An American tourist sitting near us asked his mother if they were "adding on". Bless.

 

We hopped off and joined the queue only to discover we both needed to go to the toilet. What to do? Public toilets in Italy can be tricky to locate. We decided to tough it out and stayed in the queue and waited and waited. It didn't seem that long before we were inside but then we could see the queue winding in and out between columns and disappearing out of view. Outside touts had offered tours as a way of jumping the queue but it all seemed a bit dodgy. Inside however when we were offered an official tour we accepted, jumped the queue, found a loo and joined our group. Because it was busy we were given personal amplifiers so we could hear the guide.

Jack was not so impressed with these, though he loved learning about the Colosseum. He was pleased to learn about the lifts and trap doors they used to get the animals up into the arena. Occasionally his hand would sneak up into the air as he waited to ask a question, though the first time he got shy and forgot what he was going to ask.

He was also pleased to find the gift shop where he found a present for a friend and himself.