Rome 33 1/3

So here's the last day of Rome! We got up and packed all our crap, then dropped our bags off in the hostel's baggage room and went out for our final day of Italian adventures!

We'd decided to do another walking tour of Rome (The walking tour we took a few days ago had two routes and we decided to do the other one as well) and so we went and got to the meeting place in time to find that this group was much larger than any of the other walking tours we'd previously taken. What I forgot to mention about the previous tour was that the hostel had given us almost no direction in terms of where to meet the guide. In fact we'd walked around the town square aimlessly hoping that there'd be a dude with a sign or a red t-shirt (like there was in Paris) but to no avail. Luckily we walked up to one of the many groups that was gathering there randomly (there were protests being held with people burning stuff there) and it happened to be the right group. This time the group was easy to find and we soon started off on a tour of Rome.

We got to see the track the gladiators used, the Colosseum, heaps of famous buildings, the Jewish ghetto, the forum and two major things. First was the theatre. This was the greatest theatre ever. They would method act like no-one ever has before or since. They would do their play and if it called for someone to be killed, they would bring a condemned criminal on stage and kill him in the way the play dictated. If there was a sex scene, they brought it to life. Hell, apparently during the play The Conception of the Minotaur the ending requires that someone get raped by a bull. So I'm sure you can imagine what happened to the poor guy who was playing the woman got to look forward to (remember, there were no woman actors in those days… only dudes). The second was Nero's house. I won't go into the whole history lesson, but I'm sure everyone knows that Nero was, and I quote both tour guides here, "certified bats*** crazy" and played his fiddle while Rome burned. After this he decided to almost bankrupt it by building a house that was half the size of Rome. Literally half the size. This included a lake in the middle of his house. The great thing here is that he then decided that he'd have a party boat on the lake and the boat had to be powered by the best propulsion system ever devised by man. One thousand swans with ribbons around their necks.

Unfortunately, this tour wasn't even nearly as good as the previous one and so didn't really keep my attention too well. I still learned a heap, but just didn't enjoy it as much. After this it was time to go grab our bags and head off to the train for an overnight rail to Lucerne.

Before I finish this blog off though, I do need to quickly talk about the food we had and a few other little points.

As anyone who remotely knows me is fully aware, I'm not a big fan of pasta at the best of times. I love lasagna, but that's about it. The first day there I had a carbonara that was pretty good though. The next day I had a bolognese that was really good. On the last day just before we left I had a carbonara that was the best I've ever had in my life. I had massive super-thick lumps of bacon in it, a really nice creamy egg flavor…. It was just divine. In fact, this may just prove how good it was. There was parmisan cheese on the table and I didn't add any. That's right. I had the option to add cheese to a dish and it was so good that I didn't. Add in the fact that I also had lasagna (good, but not as good as mum's), some really nice lamb ((and I don't even like lamb) and more pizza than I can remember and it all adds up. Hell, I was hoping to lose a few kilos on this trip due to all the walking, but I have a feeling I'm going to put on about 500kg by the time I get home and look like some sort of cross between Jabba the Hutt and Pizza the Hutt.

This following point isn't so much just about Italy, but France and Spain as well. They love scooters and smartcars. Those things are everywhere. It's obvious that they're a solution to the massive population and need for space, but it's just so strange going from the US (where every second person drove an SUV) to a place where everyone rides pushbikes and drives tiny plastic cars.

Finally is a little awesome point about the last thing that happened. As we were collecting our bags to head to the train we heard some guys talking about how much the taxi ride had cost them from Termini Station to the hostel. It had taken me and Sarah about 10-15 minutes tops to walk, but due to some creative taxi work they had been charged 40 Euros…

Fun Fact: It turns out that my incredible racist streak was not satisfied in any way due to the total lack of hearing even one Italian shout "Mama Mia!" regardless of how excited they got, how many hand gestures they used or how much it sounded like they were about to. We did eat in a place called "Mario's" though…