Oh The Places We’ll Go

So Thomas and I are posting again from an internet cafe in Rome.  It’s our last day here, since we’re going to Florence and Pisa tomorrow to explore until we move onto Venice in a couple of days.  Since we posted last, we made it back to the Colusseum to take a couple of pictures as well as have dinner at a little cafe near the Colusseum.  The food hasn’t been much of a transition for either of us.  A lot of pizza, a lot of spaghetti, bread, etc.  Not much of a stretch for people who eat pizza and spaghetti on a frequent basis, although the quality (especially of the spaghetti) is way better than in America.

Yesterday was probably our most social day here since we met our two dormmates in our hostel, Sophie and Nancy, with whom we spent well over 2 hours discussing American stereotypes, British stereotypes, having a good laugh along the way.  It was pretty funny, they were both REALLY interested in how high school is in America since it’s pretty different in England.  They are both on their gap year, which is basically a break in between graduating from school and going to university.  Nancy introduced herself to us and goes ‘Nancy, that’s a pretty American name, right?’ and Thomas and I just look at each other and go ‘Umm… I guess?  Not really’.  Haha. 

We got to talking about, among other things, football, where to go in England, what Scottish people are like (dirty and rugged, sound funny apparently), and what people in America are like.  I guess being from California makes us really cool, especially since we are both from different parts of the state (Santa Barbara and near San Francisco).  We explained baseball and basketball to them, learned about rounders (?) and netball, and got to hear their best American accent impressions. 

We made our reservations on the train to Florence today, so we leave tomorrow at 10:30 to Florence and after checking into our hostel we are going to try and make the day trip out to Pisa to see the leaning tower. 

So far today we’ve seen the Trevi Fountain, the four rivers fountain, and the Pantheon.  The Trevi Fountan is absolutely gorgeous.  Huge, amazing, a spectacular sight.  We both threw coins over our backs and made a wish before moving on to the Pantheon.  The dome inside the Pantheon is what makes it the most impressive.  The four rivers fountain is in the middle of being restored, which kind of sucks, but it is still beautiful.

We’re off to see more sights in Rome before we leave so we’ll update more when we get our bearings in Florence.

Ciao!