We left the house at 8:30 this morning to take a 9:45, three-hour train ride to Rome. The countryside on the way to Rome was the usual; all beautiful. We were amazed to see how much graffiti there was at all of the train stations.
We first checked into our hotel, which was actually quite nice for European inner-city standards, from what I understand. Our room had no built-in A/C (necessary in Rome this time of year, IMO), so we had a little portable unit with an exhaust tube that connected to the window (the whole thing reminded me of R2-D2). We then left for lunch at a little pizzaria around the corner from our hotel. Good stuff, and they the restaurant staff took a liking to Mackenzie (apparently, Italians have a thing for blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids. You would have thought she was the golden child the way she was treated (got a free hat out of the deal). After that we headed over to the Coliseum. That was really cool. Many pics were taken (what do you expect from shutter-happy me?), and the guide (really the way to go) was great for providing historical information. Interesting that the order of seating was women up top, men next foreigners next (they were the rich ones who did all of the gambling), and then royalty and dignitaries, including heads of state and other government officials. The reality of what it must have been like 2000 years ago was really quite humbling, even with the sickening amount of cheesy touristy things around.
After that, we stopped in for light dinner, where after too much pizza at lunch, and not enough water in the near 100-degree heat, most of us were good for only soup. The minestrone was excellent; not spicy, but extremely flavourful. We got back to our hotel room where our R2 unit had cooled our room down nicely, and we slept better then than anytime during the rest of the trip (talk about being addicted to cool air…)
No comments:
Post a Comment