We left Italy today, but it wasn’t until later in the evening, so we still had a lot of time to spend.  Amanda and I barely made breakfast, and in fact they had already taken most of the food out by the time Amanda got there.  There wasn’t even much for me to get for her.  Ah well.

Will had mentioned wanting to see the Colosseum and none of the rest of us minded going back there again, so we checked out of the hotel (leaving our luggage there with them) and hoofed it over there.  The line wasn’t too bad, so we decided to go on in this time.  Amanda and I shared an audio guide, which means we paid a couple euros more for a cheap set up earbuds.  I had one or two sets in my backpack that I could have used.  Ah well.

As satisfied as I was just going to the Colosseum yesterday, going inside was definitely cooler.  So many steps were worn almost smooth with almost 2000 years of steps, and the steps themselves were ridiculously high.  It seems that most of the other old places we’ve been had smaller steps, not taller ones.

They had a couple water fountains there.  The first instinct is that water there must be nasty since the place is so old.  The spigots themselves were much newer than everything else, but I think the audio guide mentioned that there actually were water fountains.  Or maybe I read it.  Either way, I thought it would be cool to have a drink of water from a fountain in the Colosseum, and it was actually pretty good.

We were all hungry when we got out of there, so Stanton found a place that was supposed to be really good on Trip Advisor.  It was a bit of a hike and when we got there it was closed, so we wandered around until we found another place.  The food was good, but it took them a while to get the food to us.  By the time we were done it was just about time to go back to the hotel, get our stuff and get gone.

When we did get back to the hotel Amanda and I, and Stanton for one or two of them, stopped in a couple souvenir shops.  We saw shorts all over the place that had the genitals from the David (you know, the statue) on them along with a couple aprons with the torso down to the thighs.  Stanton decided to get one of the aprons for Michael since he didn’t come on the trip.

We got on a plane back to London, Gatwick this time, with no incident.

I’ve been reading the Tales of Dunk & Egg, a series of novellas by George R. R. Martin, the writer of the series A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones for you TV-only people).  They take place about a hundred years or so before the events of ASOIAF and center around a lowly knight and his squire. a very young prince who would become king despite being far back in line for it.  Very enjoyable.

I finished these and started reading World War Z.  Actually, I resumed it.  Uncharacteristically for me, I started it a while back and didn’t get too far in.  It’s not that I didn’t like the book, I just got distracted by other things I guess.

We got to the airport around 9:00 (the trip was three hours, but we gained an hour), checked in and grabbed some food.  Amanda went on up to bed, and I was about to too, but I ended up hanging out with Stanton and Will to have a drink.  We were all about wiped out though, so we went on to our rooms after that.

Zach Dotsey