Hello from Rome!

We finally found an internet cafe!!

I had a list of things I wanted to write here, but then forgot the list in the hotel room. Let's see how much I remember...

I did want to mention a funny story from when we had dinner in Crete. The man who owned the place seemed like he wanted to talk to us, and asked if we were German in German. I said that we were from Canada and spoke English, but he actually told me that he didn't speak English. It made me laugh because I was in Greece, speaking with a Greek man in German because neither of us understood each others' native tongue. But I did learn the word for 'honeymoon' in German.

The flight to Rome was uneventful. I had a little nap and then worked on my puzzles some more. We landed and then hopped on the train. It took almost an hour to get to the stop we needed, and then we had to still walk several blocks to our hotel. We had to walk through this tunnel, and there were little arches along the median in the tunnel, and homeless people were sleeping there. I was so scared! In my mind I pictured them waking up and hearing the clakety-clack of our luggage wheels and us speaking English, realizing we were tourists, and mugging us. So I made Lowen walk as quickly and quietly as we could so as not to wake them up. But we made it safely! The room is a typical European room... very tiny! But it's really nice. Breakfast is included every morning and they have the best cheese and coffee machine.

After breakfast we decided to go look at the Coliseum and some of the ruins around that area. We had to take the subway to get there. When the train pulled up, I was amazed that every square inch of every car was covered in graffiti! We got off at our stop, and exited the station to see the Coliseum looming overhead. It is quite an impressive structure!! It seems bigger in real life than I had imagined. There are tons of guys dressed in old Roman costumes wanting to get their picture taken with you, but it is so funny because the costumes are plastic, and the men all have big bellies. Not very authentic at all! We took a guided tour, and totally bypassed the massive line. That was really neat because we learned a lot about the history of the Coliseum. After that we took a tour through some of the near by ruins, but ended up leaving that tour because the guide liked to talk a little too much and it was dragging on and on. So we split and did our own thing, and took several hundred photos between us.

After this we went to a little cafe and Lowen had a pizza and I had a mozzarella and tomato salad (my favorite!). It was 4:00 by this time, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast! Needless to say we were famished! Then we decided to head to the Vatican City and St Peter's Basilica, and had to take 2 trains to get there. That was quite a site to see as well, but by this time we were both pretty exhausted. We arrived back at the hotel, changed, and then went to a little pizzaria and got some supper. Guess what kind of pizza I got? Tomato mozzarella! It was super great.

Tomorrow we plan on going to Pisa to see the leaning tower. It's a 3 hour train ride. Then we'll head to Florence and spend the night there.