Roma

I'm going to try to keep up my two blog a day pace...we'll see how this goes. I apologize if you are on vacation or otherwise indisposed at the moment and will return in a week to find a ton of catching up to do. My first day in Rome/Italy can be described as weird and wonderful. We take a cab to the Hotel de Russie and because it is only 9:30 am (Rome time), our room is not ready yet. Nothing like being jet lagged and not having anywhere to go. My mom finds a comfy leather chair in the lobby, curls up and falls asleep. My dad enjoys an 8 euro Coke Light (I still hate Coke Light by the way) in the hotel garden/bar. I decide to go explore the hotel. I find this.

(I stole this picture off of some website because every time I tried to take a picture myself there were people in the pool, and I just couldn't do it without feeling creepy). Little did I know at the time that this would turn out to be the best pool I have ever been in, but I'll talk about that later. About two hours later, our room is all set and we check in. If there was any doubt about the city we were in, this answered it.Nothing says "Welcome to Rome" like a naked male torso on your desk. Apologies if the nakedness offends anyone...it's art. After changing out of our clothes that we just spent way too long in, Guillaume (a guy somehow business related to my dad) picks us up. We walk to a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant (sorry don't have the name...coming to realize that I didn't take very good notes of this trip) has marble sculptures everywhere. Too many marble sculptures. It's not like a sculpture museum. It's more like the storage room of a sculpture museum. This is both wonderful and weird (see the theme coming back). Wonderful in that there's beautiful sculptures to look at while we're waiting to get our food. Weird in that there's a 12 foot naked woman directly in front of me, and a little naked boy above her that I have to stare at while I'm eating. First meal in Italy: Pasta with tomato sauce and bacon (I didn't write down the official name)...delicious!

Guillaume then drives us to two separate catacombs: San Domitilla Catacombs and San Callisto Catacombs. You would think one catacomb tour would be enough, but my mom's pre-trip research said to go to Domitilla for an informative tour and San Callisto for pretty stuff (there's like frescoes, and statues and stuff in their catacombs). Catacombs are (everyone, all together) wonderful and weird for me. Wonderful in that I've kind of secretly always wanted to live in a tunnel. My friend Derek and I once tried to tunnel our way from my house to his house up the block when we were like 7. We started digging under my back porch. We didn't get very far. Weird in that...well...they put dead people there.

After the catacombs, Guillaume drove us (I got the feeling we were pretty much just using Guillaume for his car) to the Baths of Caracalla ruins. We got an audio guide which I would listen to and then summarize the basic points for my parents. Ancient ruins cliff's notes. Guillaume drives us around the city a little bit more and then drops us a short walk from the hotel. On the walk back we stop for gelato...coconut gelato. My first step towards completing my goal of having gelato every day in Italy. The gelato is just wonderful...no weird. My other goal is to make out with a gondolier...or at least a hot Italian guy...or maybe a moderately attractive Italian guy. We go back to the hotel, and my mom and I go to the pool to soothe our aching feet.

Why this pool is wonderful and weird: Wonderful in that it's not just an ordinary pool it has spa jets all throughout it and waterfalls and stuff like that. It's warm like bath water, so you can stay in for a while without getting too hot, but it's warm enough to be soothing. The pool is weird in that all the water features are operated by separate buttons that you basically have to figure out using trial and error. This weirdness is cancelled out by the fact that it is somewhat fun to watch people hit a wrong button and then act like that's what they wanted all along. I crawl into bed completely exhausted and not even caring that the sheets feel like burlap.