Rome

Written while still in Italy, but couldn't find internet to post it:

Aug 11, 2009

We loved our last day in Rome. We took a guided tour of the colloseum and the Roman forum. We really liked our guide for the second part. He seemed to know his stuff, and even told us where the phrase the wrong end of the stick came from. Something with communal bathrooms. You don't want to know.

There were some boys in our group who had done a Christian Bible Camp in Kiev, which was really interesting. They were baptists from Minnesota. They thought it was cool that I had stayed in Russia long enough to learn Russian. They were only in Ukraine for a couple of weeks, so knew phrases like chut chut and kruto. Never did get their names, but it was fun to meet people who had also been doing religious things in Eastern Europe.

Our next stop after the Roman forum was the piazza Novona where we saw the puppet master. This (probably) crazy guy had set up a little table and a boombox, and was putting on hand puppet shows. At first it was just weird, then it got pretty impressive. He did a version of Michael Jackson complete with smoke and the moonwalk. Hilarious! The next favorite was the can-can, which admittedly got a little graphic. He flashed some knuckle at a couple of 20ish year old boys, at which everyone laughed. He also did a great job with a partner dance where the couple danced a tango in time with the music, and his hands followed one another perfectly. After watching his entire routine, we set off for the next sight.

We saw the Pantheon, a pagan church that was converted to a Christian church. So beautiful! If I hadn't been living in Russia for the last 3 months and being a tourist for the last 3 weeks, I probably would have stayed for a long, long time. Gorgeous interior and huge columns. There is a McDonalds EXACTLY across from it, which made us laugh. So weird to see this beautiful church's courtyard open onto a McDonalds. Seemed wrong somehow.

Then it was off to the Trevi fountain. My mom had especially wanted to go there, and we kept chucking euro cents into the fountain. Stayed for a while and enjoyed the atmosphere.
Then we treked back to the train station, grabbed our bags, and set off to make our next connection.