Rome is completely awesome. Today we got to see the ancient Roman ruins!!! They were so, so cool. I love all the fountains here...nothing like a chance for free water! (You all take it for granted in the States, I bet!) We got really lucky and today was "Family Day" in Rome (I'm not sure how often this exists here) and we got to see all the ruins for free. I'm trying to think of more intelligent things to say about them, but yeah. Pretty much just totally rad. I took twice as many pictures today than I have on any other day this entire trip (the total was about sixty) and I'm sure when I get them developed it will be like, "This is... an ancient building. Mighta been a courthouse or something. And this...this is a ruin. It was...a fountain. Don't quote me on that. Oh, this was that house for virgins! Oh wait, no, that was what we thought it was, but then we figured out that it was actually THIS." Very silly. Oh, although I will recognize at least the three or four pictures of us at that stadium where the chariot races were. There are several pretty ridiculous, potentially blackmailish pictures of us pretending to be horses and chariot riders racing. We had lunch at a park on a hill and there were just the tops of ruins sticking out the top, and it was interesting to watch the little Italian kids playing on them. I mean, that was probably someone's roof or something once. Just think, a thousand years from now, some futuristic children might be playing on your chimney.
It's been a busy couple of days since I last wrote. Yesterday we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa! Very exciting. It leans. It is groovy. It's not quite as tall as I was expecting it to be... probably about ten stories? But it totally leans, probably about ten degrees. We just had lunch in front of it, on an intended three hour stopover from Florence to Rome. Although, the train that was supposed to leave from Pisa at 3 didn't actually leave until nearly 6! We were so perplexed as to what could possibly delay a train so much. We learned when it arrived that someone had committed suicide on the tracks. Whoa. Yes, that would do it. It's so mind boggling, all the things happening in the world at the same time. Our last day in Florence, Thursday, was really awesome, by the way. We got to see the Uffizi Gallery, which has joined the Louvre and the National Gallery as my favorite museums in the entire world. It was so amazing. I wrote down about forty works in my journal that I just loved, but I kind of forget which is which so I need to look them up. There was this really awesome statue that featured ...some dude... saving his two children from a snake. Really cool. Ever since seeing Winged Victory in Paris I've had such an appreciation for sculptures. They also had the Birth of Venus and that other one by the same artist whose name I can't spell (Botticelli?) about the passage of spring. We had gelato from Cafe Corona one last time and had a quite excellent dinner (I had spaghetti carbonara, which has been pretty much my standard. So yummy!)
That's got the big things covered, I think. Tomorrow we're going to see Pompeii! So exciting. We have plans to see the Vatican City on Wednesday, and I hope the Pope is back by then because he usually speaks on Wednesdays, but we saw something on the news in the metro station about how he's out of the country right now. That would be a bummer to miss him! I'm going to probably have very patchy Internet access here in Rome...the hostel charges 5 euro an hour for internet, which is ridiculous and I'm definitely not going to use it at all. I'm at a cafe right now that charges only 1 euro an hour, but it's rather far from our hostel so we'll see. That means I'm going to start writing back to your emails while I'm here, but after this we're headed to a local concert so I probably will only have time to send a few. Sorry! I fully intend to write back to everyone once I have more time online (...which might not be until I'm home a week from Monday. But I will definitely write back!!!)
Also, Mel and Mo's parents brought us magazines when they visited, and Knut the polar bear was on the cover of People! What on earth. Is he big in the States now?
Love to all,
Sara
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