ROME!! (Thursday 6/10)

We landed last night in ROME and our very first impressions are that there is a lot of English spoken (and on our bus driver's radio) and on signage (it was very clear that we could go to a club called "Gay World" on a huge billboard). Tons of graffiti in the city as we're driving through. And then beautiful oooold buildings. We rode the public bus from the train station to the apt - our hostess said to take it four stops - but none of the stops are named, there is no map, and street signs don't exist (they're on the buildings)

We got to the apt - and its incredible! Surpasses the cuteness of London - and the "street" (more like an alley way) is exactly what you picture when you think of the narrow winding streets of Rome. I'll post some pics. Our hostess, Paola, was excellent - she even had food for us waiting (including pasta and sauce that I am cooking now - water takes a lifetime to boil here!). We tried the tv - a million channels, but only one in English (BBC World News). They have MTV here, and we saw a Dean Cain movie on, but all in Italian.

We decided to go out for dinner and walk about to check out the neighborhood - and we round the corner and step onto the main street. Its the Colloseum all lit up. Ruins to the right of us, ruins behind us... Crazy!!

We saw a place just right across the street and it looked good - to order water its gas or no gas - and our waiter spoke better English than any of our servers in London. Great food - lousy service. But, "when in Rome.." (And for the record, Amy was the first to use it.)
We had "assorted cheeses", Patti had lasagna, I had the pasta ai fori (prosuitto, peas, sausage, cream sauce), and Amy had salmon risotto. After dinner we walked down to the Colloseum and got a few pics of it at night. People were down there trying to sell trinkets and tripods (for night photos).

This morning we walked down again and ran into three guys dressed in Roman Soldier costumes. They were cute and I knew that it would cost to have pics taken with them - so Patti was going to jump in and I'd take the pic... Well they insisted we all be in the pic, and then kep taking pics - they were just chatting throughout, not really posing, and one was smoking. THEN, 10 euro EACH! Nice... So that was our "welcome to Rome" experience. Not bitter - good times, and a learning experience. :)

We bought Roma passes - a 3 day pass to Rome - gives you access to all the lines of public transport, and two sites free with discounts for other sites. We got a tour with the Colloseum and learned a few things we wouldn't have without him - for example, the word "arena" is the word for the special sand that was used on the floor of the Colloseum - it was special "blood soaking" sand so they wouldn't slip on blood...

Then we went to the ruins, Palatine Hill - temples, the via sacre... Incredible wonders! TONS of pics. I'll put more pics on my facebook page if you have access to that. Just a taste of our experience here. Oh, and we don't have internet here yet (Paola is supposed to be hooking us up with that) - so we don't have facebook or email right now.

As I send this - we're eating the pasta we made (yay!) And waiting for Dana to arrive. She's in Rome, and we'll meet her at the train station.

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