Day 31 - A wonderful day in Rome...our last

Bonjourno,
Mark forgot to mention that yesterday (the same day that we bought the camera) we did actually end up buying something that we wanted...a chess set. This has been something we've been looking for since Mark beat me in Hallstatt. He seems to like this game a lot. So, we by-passed all the really nice ones that catch your eye and ended up getting one at a toy store in the same mall that ripped us off. Not only did we get chess, we also got checkers, backgammon, chinese checkers, and 2 others I had never heard of. You know, one of those travel sized 6 games in 1 dealios? Very exciting! The reason I bring this up is because our day was wonderfully relaxed and we actually had time to sit and enjoy the early evening in front of our mini-mobil at Camp Tiber. Aaaaah...I love to relax after a good day of being productive and then having the entire evening to do nothing really. (This is probably something I'd be doing more of if we were back in CA.) OK, let me back up. When I say "productive", I mean that we got off to an early start and hit up the Vatican Museum. We thought we were getting there early, but it seems like about 2,000 other people's early is a tad bit EARLIER. So, we waited in our first line this trip (except for the one at Wimbledon, but that was called a que). Thankfully it moved quickly. It was fun to people watch and it gave me a chance to read to Mark all the highlights it had and what we were going to be seeing. You know, TRY to get him a little bit excited to view these amazing pieces of art. Well, Mark and I view museums a tad differently. Mark's idea of a piece of art is "seen it, moving on...", while I like to sit and absorb it a little bit longer. I'm actually surprised at how much I've been enjoying the museums. So what I've been doing is taking a picture of the piece of art and hopefully I'll take the time to do my reflecting on it later. (I'm nervous about Florence...there are a couple museums there and I think Mark is museumed out, perhaps I'll check the stuff out NEXT time I'm here). We (I) thoroughly enjoyed this museum. From mummies to sculptures of naked people, to Micheal Angelo's Sistine Chapel...it was wonderful. AND we got through in record time. From the time we started in our line to stepping outside the museum, 2 hours, 20 minutes...not bad.
After that, we were hungry, so we walked around and found a great little hole in the wall place for lunch. THIS place had the character AND they served us our meal on real plates! We then went searching for a scooter shop. (There are SOOOOO many scooters here in Rome!) After Mark's wonderful map reading skills, we found the one scooter shop in Rome. I don't think this will necessarily interest most of you, but the fact that we both have scooters and the fact that there are a ton of KYMCOs buzzing around this place, it gets us excited. The scooters out here are quite a bit more inexpensive than out by us. So we talked to the guy for a while (he spoke English very well so we drilled him with other questions unrelated to scooters, like is it really the Italian law to NOT do returns for money? ) and left him a bit frazzled at his "lack" of English. Oh well...we thanked him and moved along.
The next thing on our list of things to do today was visit the Roman History museum. This is the museum you can find the "Discus thrower" and other statues from the Roman times...Mark wasn't too impressed with the idea of going in another museum so we bagged it. Instead we grabbed a train back to the campsite (4:00ish). We decided on the train back that we were going to go straight to the mini-mobil and put our swimsuits on and jump in our pool. Come to find out that you need a swim cap in order to go in. What is this?!?! Instead we drooled at the gate and laughed at the same time at all the people with swim caps on as well as speedos.
We bought a nice cold Iced Tea and found ourselves under a shady tree playing chess. Wonderful! Yes, Mark beat me 2x, I enjoy telling you myself. However, I beat him in checkers 2x so we're even. :) I think he's feeling sorry for me for losing 3x now, he's started to give me a couple of tips that he's been using. Whatever, I'm just letting him feel all good about himself, I'll be breaking him pretty soon. We took a walk around the campsite and checked out all the European campers/tents and the different models that are out here. There was even a camper bus with the canopy attached...nice. We ended up at the Tiber Bar for dinner. We're realizing that this IS a really nice campground. The restaurant was outside and the food looked amazing! I grabbed a pineapple bacardi breezer on my way to our table and sipped on that thing till our delicious food arrived. This was a little splurge, and I didn't even clear it up with Mark. Felt good!
We had a fun conversation about the future while we sat here at our outside table with a candle on it. We decided that in a few years we were going to come back here to Rome, buy a KYMCO 150cc scooter and ride it out to our friends Brigetè and Paulò's house out in Tuscany...backpack the Dolomites for a while and then ship our "used" scooter back home. Oh, to be able to dream! Anyone what to join us?
We fell asleep exhausted and STUFFED! Tomorrow we hit Florence.
Ciaò, us ;)