Tom, your faithful travel correspondant here. When we last left off, we were relaxing after the Vatican Museum. We were hoping to catch a movie, and noticed a theater in Piazza Cavour, nearby to the hotel. We headed over, but alas, no movies in English, or with English subtitles. And my Italian, is well, terrible. So we stopped in for a nice dinner nearby, and quizzed the waiter on English movie theaters. He wasn’t too helpful, as he probably never needs to seek out English movie theaters.

We spent the evening with a vicious round of crazy 8’s, then woke up nice and early and headed out to use the Metro to the Colisseum. The Metro was nice and clean, and the trains came pretty often. Lots of pushing and shoving around the trains, as well as some pretty intense graffiti on the sides of the trains, a la the Bronx, 1985. Except the graffiti was in Italian, so I couldn’t make out what they were trying to say.

So we exit the train station at the Colisseum, which you can see as soon as you exit. It looks amazing, and huge. We walked toward it, and then it hit. A wave of “Do you want an English speaking tour? How about an umbrella? How about a tour? Buy. Buy. Buy.” After being inundated, one begins to think (about getting a tour of the Colisseum), well, is it a really big building? Yes? Where people were killed and eaten by lions? Yes? Then I think I can take it from here, thanks. What a ripoff, they
were telling people that they could skip the “long lines” if they paid 25€ each for the tour, and we said no and were inside within 10 minutes. Man, it *is* amazing though.

It started to rain, so we ducked into a pizzeria for lunch. Man, fettucine alfredo just isn’t done correctly in the US. Then we spent the afternoon on the grounds of Palatino and the Fora Romana (ancient Roman forum). Cool stuff, but at some point you’ve got to say, wow, another really old rock. At least at Stonehenge they stack the really old rocks.

Still pretty neat though - Palatino, Roman Forum

We had a really nice dinner at a small place while searching for English-speaking theaters (strike out!) and then were on our way home, and found one! A small indie-type theater, showing 2 movies, one in English. So we saw Bobby, in English, with Italian subtitles. The movie was good for us, not quite as good for those counting on the subtitles, which didn’t seem to convey the funny of the movie. Oh well.

Today we woke up a bit on the late side, and took a nice walk over to Vatican City again. We stopped into St. Peter’s Church, and visited the Basilica underground. I thought the Vatican Museum was breathtaking, this was just too much.

Unbelievable.

So on the beer watch, when you ask simply for a beer, you get a Nastro Azzurro, a local beer I haven’t had in the US before. Not my cup of tea, I prefer the Moretti beer which I’ve actually had before. Hopefully on the next leg of the tour in Venice, I’ll get the chance to sample a new one. The Nastro is OK, very light.

That’s about all for now, people are staring at us everywhere we go. It must be my sexy. Or maybe Shay’s. Not sure which, but we’re playing the staring game right back. We’re thinking of breaking into song, maybe that would provide entertainment for all of our daily fans.

Oh well, sorry to ramble on like this, there really aren’t many internet cafes around, so I’m typing this from the same terminal that I typed the last message from. I probably won’t write again until we’re in Venice.

Oh, one last thing, this is for Danielle, they are playing Holiday Road (theme song from the original Vacation!) in the internet cafe right now. The awesomeness is unbearable.

Arrivaderci.