ROME #1

Obviously writing even one blog post (if not many) about Rome is going to be...what's the word I'm looking for here...oh yes, INTIMIDATING. Not even sure how you cover a city like Rome with one weedy little blog page and no history background to speak of. Oh, well. Blissful ignorance never stopped me before, so why start now, right?

Needless to say, after we left Siena it was not exactly difficult to find Rome--they ain't kidding when they say all roads, let alone road signs, lead to it. We rolled into Rome in the early afternoon.

First thing to do was locate our bed and breakfast. Dang thing was positively hiding from us but we knew it was somewhere in Chinatown.

I'm not sure how long it took us to realize that the bed and breakfast was crammed into a tiny space on the sixth floor of a nondescript building that looked just like the others. A long time. But sure enough--eventually we stumbled upon a teensy-weensy tag on a teensy-weensy doorbell that led us up to the Domus Elisa.

So. The Domus Elisa B&B turns out to be part of a Roman couple's cramped apartment. Seriously, the guy's ancient grandmother sleeps next door to the elevator. An elevator which under the best of circumstances could probably fit two children or one overweight teenager. Additionally it has a claustrophobia-inducing cage on it that must be unlocked to exit the elevator, for which reason I chose to tackle six flights of stairs with gusto rather than bother.

All four of us were in the same room. Here's a picture of Dustin in the bedroom, where you can see the two twin beds together and then the bunk beds off to the side (which Debbie and Don gallantly took):But apart from size constraints it really wasn't half bad; everything was spic and span. The owners Carlos and Maria seemed pleasant. We printed our bus tour tickets off their computer and ran out the door.

Practically the whole beginning of the tour was a ten minute pit stop at the Vatican, so here are some obligatory shots of St. Peter's:

Then we swung back around and went along the Tiber River:
Passed by the Victor Emmanuel monument, on which more later:
And then, since it was getting dark, we got off the bus and had dinner. Afterward we stopped by the Colosseum for a little haunted sightseeing. As any rational human being would have done in our place.
Next morning we packed up, checked out of the hotel and left our luggage in the car while we went back to see if the Colosseum was any less freaky by daylight. And yeah, it was.
Aha! Here we are again at the Victor Emmanuel monument. A really stupefyingly decorative building that I wish were edible. Chomp.
Last but not least, Trevi Fountain. Magnifico. Okay boys and girls. Per my previous suspicions we're going to need more than one post to get through this, even with my minimal approach to storytelling (a picture's worth a thousand words, heh heh.) So meet me back here tomorrow, same time, same place--don't quote me on that--and I'll slather more Rome all over your interwebs.

Ciao!