Roma

Well, I managed to book two party hostels in a row. I don't think I did it intentionally. At the hostel in Barcelona, the first thing they say .. can't tell if it's a disclaimer or their way of saying get ready .. is "this is a party hostel". And they take it seriously. Here, in Rome, there was no such warning, but they do like to have fun! Every night, they start it out with a bunch of free alcohol in the kitchen. The first night, it was a big bowl of sangria. I guess that's Italy's way of welcoming me from Spain. The places we went out to haven't been very Italian though. An Irish pub, and a bar with a band playing rock music in English. I've been trying to get over being sick, so I thought I would take it easy today. But they kicked us all out at 11 am from the hostel. I guess there's a daily lock-out for "cleaning". So, I walked through the rain to an internet cafe here.

The sights in Rome are amazing. The first day, I walked all around to get my bearings, as usual. I was walking down the street, and looked up from the map, and there in front of me was the colosseum! I'm a sucker for all the old roman ruins, even the little remnants of walls that can be found in most old cities. But, the colosseum is still intact and has so much history! It's amazing to see. Inside, I just stood for a while up in the seats drinking it in. Their architecture and technology was incredibly advanced. I bet that in roman times, for a foreigner, it would have been even more amazing to see the colosseum than it is for me. At least I've seen pictures, and I know that such a structure is possible to build.

I wish the roman forum was more intact. It's just ruins now, much worse than the colosseum. The pantheon is mostly intact, though, because the christian church decided to use the existing structure rather than pilliage its materials for another. The marble that faced the outside has been taken though, so it doesn't look as shiny as it would have in roman times. The oculus, the hole in the top of the dome, lets light into the pantheon and seems to naturally light the whole thing perfectly.

And I saw St. Peter's Basilica, an amazing building. Inside, every wall has some masterpiece sculpture on it. I can imagine that, if you were catholic, that having mass there could be quite emotional.
The sistine chapel is alright, though I like the "School of Athens" fresco better, which is in a much less crowded room that is on the way to the sistine chapel. Though it's interesting to see a room that has frescoes painted by Raphael, Michelangelo, and Bernini.
The Trevi Fountain is really beautiful. It's at the site where an aqueduct historically ended in town, and they built a fountain there in Rennaissance times to celebrate the water's arrival. It's one large sculpture. The bottom, where the water flows, is like a riverbed and waterfall, and above that, rock and trees and other natural forms. Then, above that, the stone morphs into a scene of humans, and greek gods and horses in front of the facade of a building with corinthian columns.

The pizza's different here, BTW. The dough is more like ciabatta bread. They're rectangular, not round, and it's by-the-slice. You pay by weight, and when you get it to go, they cut it in half, and fold it so it's like a sandwich. Delicious! Every place I go, I gotta find the cheap eats. It was tacos in Mexico, bocadillas in Spain. Pizza here. Beer's expensive here, but wine's cheap.

There's a korean girl here in the internet cafe singing American pop songs. She's been doing it for an hour and its really annoying, but no one here seems to think it's weird. I think she's playing a karaoke game on the computer. This is a very hectic internet cafe.