First of all, the Chinese food was not that bad at all!! And it was extremely cheap!! Anyways...Today was a fun today...long...but fun!! We started off at 9 in the morning walking towards piazza de Navona for our walking tour of ancient Rome, when we saw the Piazza de Venezia, The tomb of the unknown soldier and to the left and down the street the Colosseum. Instead of doing the walking tour we decided to see the same sights for ourselves, since both of us, especially Danny has a fairly decent to good background in the area. (Thanks to Mr. Prevas). We walked to the Colosseum and ran into an English speaking tour, where we were able to skip the lines for only 10 euros more. It was nice. However, our tour guide was HORRIBLE. Her Italian accent was so strong we could barely understand her. On top of the language barrier, the tour itself was terrible. Either of us could have given a better tour. The guide contradicted herself, and it sounded like she looked up all her dates on the internet, because they were off by a lot and her facts were just bad!!!! (only we knew otherwise though, the rest of the people on the tour were amazed...idiots!!) After the tour, we were given some time to walk around the place by ourselves and take some good pictures. Besides the bad tour, the ticket also granted us entrance to Palantine Hill (the hill where Rome was started and all the Imperial Palaces were located from the time of Augustus, and the Roman Forum. Our guide for the second part of the tour, Palantine Hill, was much better, he actually knew his facts; he was a student from Cambridge, England...so naturally he spoke English that we could understand. We walked through the entire hill where the palaces would have stood and saw the place where Julius Caesar was creamated...it was pretty cool. After our tour of Palantine Hill, we were allowed to walk through the house of Augustus, which was really cool since this exhibit has only been open for about 30 days. As Mr. Prevas said, it was a very simple house, but fit for an Emperor. Also we were able to see the place where Rome started...the remains of the house of Romulus. It was all very cool. Both of these places that we visited today were at least 2000 years old...it was incredible that they...especially the Colosseum. As our guide said, and was very true, Romans were much better architects back in ancient times than they are today. Also around the Colesseum were two arches...One for Constantine and the other for Titus. A new discovery outside the Colesseum, only a few months old, was that while they were digging to add a metro stop, they discovered a 30 foot statue of Constantine. Incredible!

After our tours, we decided to head back to the hostel, and grab a bite to eat on the way. We stopped off at a little cafe on the side of the road which turned out to have some of the best pizza we have had since being in Italy. After lunch and 6 hours walking in 35 degrees celsius heat, we headed back to the hostel for some much needed rest. WOW, did we need it!!! We slept for about 2 hours, then headed across the street to a local Italian restaurant for some wine and futbol (Italy lost in P.Ks 4 to 2 to Spain!) BAD! Dinner was good though, we drank 3 L of wine and were only charged for one. Our waiter was very funny and nice, he lived and worked out in California for a while and had served and met some famous people throughout his stay on the West Coast. He spoke 5 languages and was very outgoing...he liked us a lot, we think that is why he did not charge us for the wine. (which was very good coming out of a barrel in the middle of the restaurant).

Now we are back in the internet cafe, or laundrymat, updating everyone on our day. We will probably call it an early night again tonight because we have to wake up early to take a Vatican City Tour. We already found out that our tour guide will be AMERICAN!!!! Until tomorrow, ciao!!