From icy Vienna we flew to Rome, which despite it being mid-Autumn had the best and warmest weather I've experienced in a while. I have been looking forward to Italy the whole trip, partially because it's just a cool place, and partially because it's long overdue - I was going to do exchange at school when I learned Italian but long story short I didn't.
We wasted no time immersing ourselves in the Italy's rich culture, and by culture I mean food. On the first day alone Gavin ate three pizzas. We kept warning him to pace himself - we're in Italy for a while - but honestly after 5 days I think he can eat pizza every single day we're here. Zac is embracing gelato in a big way. I meanwhile am obsessed with bruschetta and have decided to eat as many bruschettas in as many different piazzas as possible. Sitting in a piazza, having some good food and watching the world go by is the quintessential Italian experience as far as I'm concerned. On the topic of food we had a meal with the Levitans who were passing through Italy, bringing with them gifts of Arryn, Steve's iPod and the sweetest gift of all.. Biltong.
But we didn't just spend our time in Rome eating - we had to walk to the places we ate at, and on the way we saw a lot. Rome is one of those places where you can have heaps of fun just walking for hours, going nowhere in particular, and going nowhere fast. One of the things we stumbled upon by chance was yet another changing of the guards (we've seen London, Athens and Budapest). This one was the most heavily militarized with the guards pointing machine guns at the onlookers. A bit menacing but perhaps fitting given the violent riots in Rome just days ago... It seems wherever we go there have just been riots. It happened in Madrid, London and now here. Maybe Europe is trying to scare us off?
Anyway, we are all monumented and churched out at this point in the trip, but the monuments in Italy genuinely cool, mainly because ancient Rome was awesome. But as cool as the monuments are they were not so easy to visit. Rome was more closed than Lyon in August (Backpacking in-joke.. If you don't get it you're not cool enough). We visited the Colloseum three times all of which it was closed due to a brick that fell. The pantheon was closed. The famous synogogue was closed to visitors due to Succot. The walking tour guide didn't pitch. The Vatican tour guide didn't pitch. Even the Aqua-Store I heard about online with 100 types of pure water diagnosed to customers based on their needs at that moment was closed. And I was really looking forward to that one :(
We still did the monuments ourself despite them being closed. The Trevi Fountain is the coolest I've seen in Europe. We got a tour of the outside of the Colosseum by a very Italian, very knowledgeable archeologist who revealed how awesome gladiators were and how cool it would have been to be unemployed in ancient Rome - free bread, free meat and oil occasionally and free entry to the Colosseum to see elephants writing things and sea battles and all sorts of awesome stuff.
We began all nightlife at the Spanish steps where people played a rather messy game of rolling bottles down the stairs trying to get them the whole way down without breaking. I did the same but with a bouncy ball - only nearly hit a couple folks.. We took the Spanish Steps Pub Crawl one night - a long and messy night of which I remember a few things; an epic beer pong tournament, a leather-clad U2 tribute band, an American airforce firefighting couple, vomit girl and attempting to work out the 4 keys to our hostel when taking a drunken Gavin home. After ten minutes we realized we were trying to open the door to the place next door..
To conclude this blog, I have two random tangential thoughts. Firstly, Roman busses are hilarious. They are so packed that the doors struggle to close, and you need a run-up to force yourself through the packed doors. Secondly my Italian is returning amazingly. On day one I failed to order a bruschetta correctly. On day four I have full speed conversations with locals. I'm considering doing uni exchange in Italy now instead of America, and am no longer worried that I won't remember maths when I go back to uni.
Italy is my favourite place in Europe. Hands down. What a way to spend my birthday and end my trip. :D