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Here we are, in our final Italian destination…Rome. Of course to get here, we had to pass back through Naples by train. Oh Naples. The train station was packed and we needed to make a reservation for our next train on to Rome. As has been our experience with trains in Italy, there is always a long lineup for tickets because only one or two of the 8 ticket windows will be open. So we lined up, while desperately clinging to our luggage…the Naples train station is ripe with thieves. Anyway, we'reall lined up and this old guy wearing thick coke-bottle glasses begins pushing through the line. People let him through because he seemed as though he was blind. 'Somehow' he was able to wind his way directly to the front of the line! A few of the Italians at the front started giving him a hard time. He just yelled back at them, went to the next available ticket window and bought his ticket. I watched him as he walked away from the ticket area…he kept up the act for a few meters, then quickly slipped through a crowd of people and off to his platform. Now that's how it's done in Naples.

We arrived into Rome, found our hotel, and needed something to eat. The city was brutally hot, and I must say, our first impressions weren't great! The metro was easy to use, but once we were up on street level things looked dingy and run down. Of course we arrived on a Sunday..holy day for all those Catholics, so the streets were empty and kind of eery. The walls are all covered in graffiti, and things just were generally rough around the edges. We decided to eat dinner at one of the restaurants in our hotel's neighborhood….MammaMia Pizzeria. Yeah, not the best of plans. Most people would have figured out that a place with that kind of name might not serve the best pizza, but hey, we're tired of choosing restaurants night after night. After dinner we wondered over to the Colosseum. It was quite something to see it all lit up at night. Yes, now this was the Rome that we came to see!