So I'm truly here, we arrived in Rome Wednesday night and with relatively little hassle we got to our hostel.If anyone's planning on flying soon Korean Air was fantastic. They put us up in a five star hotel in Seoul which will probably be the nicest place we'll stay the whole trip.
And now we're just chiling out on the Roman streets. Me and Eric met another Australian guy, Mitch that we've been sticking with since we got here. We walked into our hostel and pretty much couldn't escape the Australians so it's taken a few days to realise that I'm not actally home. Thursday we saw the Colosseam and Roman Forum but I got really sick - I think it must have been food poisoning and started throwing up all over their sacred, ancient sites... Real classy. Had to find my way back to the hostel, got lost, but realised just how friendly and helpful the Romans really are. They were all so nice to me even if they couldn't understand what I was talking about. We ended up at an American bar that night with some American friends so we got that really authentic Italian experience of Bruce Springstein and NFL.
Yesterday we did the Vatican. We got a tour with George Clooney - ok so his name was Stan but he looked exactly the same and knew it, introducing himself as George. St Peter's Basilica pretty much drew one reaction from the 3 of us - it's very big. I can not begin to explain the size of this building, photos we took don't do justice to the massive scale of everything. But all of the Vatican was pretty amazing. Just so much detailed artwork eveywhere, and so many people. The line (we got to miss it being on a tour), to get in was 2 or 3 blocks long. Craziness.
We saw the Spanish steps as well and continue to try to avoid the scammers. The boys got scammed the other day when an Ancient Roman walked up and offered to pose in a picture with them. As we were about to walk away he demanded 5 euro and as Eric said they could have just run away but he had a sword and armour so pretty much they gave in.
The pizza and gelato is fastastico, thats mostly what we've eaten since we arrived. And the people at the hostel have been great. We've met so many people so far and everyones so friendly so its been a lot of fun.
We booked an extra night tonight in Rome so we leave tomorrow - haven't decided where we will stay yet but it'll either be Florence or Venice. So for now ciao...
