So apparently all roads lead to Rome, and that was certainly true of the one that the airport bus took. After a nasty red-eye flight from Geneva preceded by an hours drive in a rental car from Lausanne due to a lack of cheap accomodation in Geneva combined with no early morning transport, we just wanted to have a sleep. Unfortunately our hostel had a lock-out, so we couldn't stay long after we checked in. We ended up spending a fair portion of the afternoon lying in the shade of a tree next to the colloseum, not necessarily a bad thing.

Zilla had a tummy bug when we arrived too, so she was out of action for the next day. I left her in the safe hands of the guys at our hostel, and soldiered on; walking around the city for a good 6 hours straight. I saw a michelangelo designed church with a meridian line on the floor to plot the sun's path, some cool fountains, a former chariot racing track, and wandered around the ruins of the Roman Forum. Probably the highlight of the day though was finding a statue not marked on the guide maps, featuring some crazy-eyed horses, a man with a hammer giving a woman an evil look, and a guy biting another bloke's finger. Check out the photos, I think you'll see why I was impressed.

The next day Zills was up and about, and we did a day trip to Pompeii where we learnt the two words that saved us a heap of cash in Italy: "Cultural Week". During this week, all the government owned sights are free!! Woohoo! Anyway, back to Pompeii - an ancient city that was swallowed up by ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted around 80 AD. The place went un-noticed until the 1800's, when excavation started. We wandered the old paved streets, checked out what was left of old houses and shops - many of them with mosaics and paintings on the walls intact. When they were excavating, the archaeologists found some cavities. They filled them with Plaster to see if they could make out a shape. The cavities turned out to be spaces where people had died. A few of the plaster models were on display; they were very eerie, you could see the expressions on the faces of the people, and their pose when they died. Back in Rome that night we did an organised pub crawl, starting with drinking beer in a park next to the colloseum. The rest of the night was good fun, and we even managed to find our way home!

The next day we saw the Pantheon (pretty cool), Spanish steps (not that special), and Trevi Fountain (Amazing). We also stumbled across a celebration for the 155th anniversary of the Italian police force, the highlight (for me anyway) the police Lamborghini Galliardo!! Brilliant.

A guided tour of the colloseum was first up on the next day, then we stuck our hand in the mouth of truth (which apparently will bite off the hand of liars) and escaped unscathed. Then off to the Vatican City, and to St. Peter's Basilica. After seeing this, I feel like any other church we visit will be a disappointment. It is spectacular. We climbed to the top of the cupola for a great view of Rome and the Vatican City. I guess people had to go pray in the afternoon, as the Vatican Museum closes really early - had to wait till tommorrow.

We had been told that the Spanish steps and Trevi fountain are great at night, so we got a bottle of chianti, and headed to the steps for a look. The place was packed with people drinking on the steps (Rome's version of the Salamanca lawns I guess) and guys trying to sell them tacky stuff. Still not amazing to look at though, unlike the Trevi fountain which looked really cool at night.

We checked out the vatican museum the next morning (after queueing for an hour and a half) and were fairly blown away by the artworks and the sheer size of the place. The Sistine Chapel is in the Vatican Museum, with it's famous frescoed ceiling. I managed to sneak a poor photo of it when the "No Photo" guy wasn't looking but it does it no justice.

We arrived in Rome expecting the place to be pretty dirty, and expecting to have our stuff stolen. Despite the throngs of other tourists, and guys trying to sell us fake Gucci sunglasses we left with good memories, and the hope that the coins that we threw in the Trevi fountain will bring us back again.

Ciao, Paul.