Today we had to bid a fond farewell to our new friends and set off for new adventures. We arrived at Rome's main train station to find that our train had been canceled and we were forced to wait inside the station until the next one came a couple hours later. We passed the time playing Rummy on the ground until it arrived and we were finally on our way. Four hours later, we arrived in Florence! We caught a bus right from the station that took us up a winding road...

Today was off to a slow start. Carson and I slept in and hung around the campsite until the afternoon before finally heading into town. We met Mike and Konsti (who had left earlier to do some sightseeing) by the obelisk in St. Peter's Square and then joined the line to enter St. Peter's Basilica, which was considerably shorter than yesterday. When we got past security, we realized that it was acceptable for guys to wear shorts. We had worn pants the last 3 days i...

After we were all up and ready for the day, we caught the shuttle from our campsite to Vatican City. Suprisingly there was no line for the Vatican Museum and we were in within a few minutes. We made our way through Museo Pio-Clementino (the Roman and Greek section) first, through room after room filled with sculptures of Gods, people and animals. We shuffled along with the crowd, each room so ornately decorated with paintings on the ceilings, statues along the wa...

We awoke as early as was possible for us and were greeted with another hot sunny day. We headed over to the Colosseum and, following Rick Steves' advice, went to Palatine Hill first were there's supposed to be a shorter line for tickets. We still ended up waiting for an hour and a half in the heat and since we were planning on visiting St Peter's Basilica later (which enforces a strict dress code), we were wearing pants which made it even worse. Finally we made i...

We awoke to the beautiful blue sunny skies that seem to accompany every day here in Italy. We packed a lunch from the grocery store and then caught the bus and metro into town. We exited the underground and suddenly right before us was the Colosseum! It was incredible to see it with my own eyes and gave me the feeling of "wow, I'm really in Rome!". The area surrounding it was filled with guys dressed like gladiators, preying on tourists foolish enough to pay to t...