Touchdown +2 days!

Colosseum
Originally uploaded by davidnmartin98

First off....we have an Italian phone number. It's +39 331 702 7904. From the US replace the + with 011 and from the UK replace it with 00. Feel free to call us or text us if you want. Skype and Yahoo have really good rates on your PC. Just remember we are 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in the US and 2 hours ahead of the UK.

It's now Sunday and this is the first chance there has been to update the blog. You'll all be pleased to know that we arrived safe and sound in Rome on Friday at 8am Rome time after a long but uneventful flight. I say uneventful, even though we had a 1 hour delay in leaving Chicago. When we arrived the first thing we did after collecting our bags was to sit down, have a coffee and work out how to get to the hotel from the airport, which lies about 30km outside of Rome itself. A short while later, and we whizzing our way into downtown Rome. A trek of about 6 blocks with bags brought us to the Hotel des Artistes, our home for the next 7 days. We booked it a while back, so we couldn’t; really remember what we had chosen. It's very basic, but then it was only about e40 per night for the centre of Rome, so we can't really complain. The room is simple and small, but the staff are friendly enough. We don't plan to be here much anyway, so it will suffice!

Friday passed in the usual 1st day jet-lag way of feeling there, but not there and somewhat disoriented most of the time. We had lunch at the railway station and found a great little wine bar to have a few glasses of wine in, all the while starring glassy eyed at our surroundings. Dinner was a Pizza (pretty good!) and then home to pop some Melatonin and off to bed.

Saturday we awoke at 6am, bright eyed and bushy tailed, thinking it was time for dinner! Alas it was only time for breakfast, so we showered, left the hotel and grabbed some Espresso, croissants and headed for the first stop of the trip, the Vatican. Ever mindful of the fact that there was already one big drag queen in residence, we dressed more soberly than usual, and very warmly as well. Rome has been hit by a cold spell, and the temperature was -2 centigrade, which is about 28 in Fahrenheit. We arrived at the Vatican at around 8am, and stood in the freezing cold outside in line until 9.30am when the doors opened. The whole experience was quite amazing. I had been through my art history book a few weeks ago, making a list of all the things that I had studied and wanted to see in person. We checked quite a few off the list. It was really quite amazing to see so many Giotto's, Caravaggio’s, Michelangelo's, Raphael's and many more masters in one place at the same time. If anything we felt a little guilty at being able to give such astounding works of art a 3 minute glance over before we moved onto the next one. Eventually we hit the Sistine Chapel, which was quite breathtaking. Michelangelo’s frescoes were amazing, and so were the other artists as well. It's quite sad that in that same chapel are frescos by the likes of Botticelli and they get completely passed over. After the Sistine Chapel, we left the Vatican Museum complex and headed onto St Peters.

When we arrived, the sheer scale of the Piazza is astounding. It's huge! I took a few snapshots (holiday pic's thats all!...) while James had a sit down on the steps for a while. Then we headed into the Basilica and marvelled at the inside. It's truly amazing, and overwhelms you by it sheer size. A trip around the dome was in order, as was a journey down into the tombs, trying to avoid the mass of nuns around John Paul II's tomb, finishing up with a quick trip to the restroom! It almost seems a crime to talk so quickly about such places, but this is a blog, not a research paper.....

In need of sustenance, we consulted the other bible, Lonely Planet Rome, and headed off to a little wine bar that sounded interesting. The little wine bar is now a building site, so after stopping off to warm ourselves in another place, we ended up in the most amazing wine bar that was also in Lonely Planet. Just like the Vatican, it deserved more than a cursory look, so we decided to buy a bottle and sit there for two hours. James chatted with some people at the table next door, while I researched where to go for dinner and drank. We had a lovely time and swore to return! Then off to dinner which was another Lonely Planet (LP) recommendation, for a 6e plate of Pasta in a super cheap restaurant! A short bus ride later and we were back the other side of town popping some more melatonin combined with some Body Shop Peppermint foot lotion and off to bed!

Today dawned cold again. A quick shower and off to find caffeine. Then we walked about 1.5 miles to the Colosseum. No gladiators, and no Christians and Lions, just us and every Japanese person outside of Japan. Although it was below freezing again, we wandered the arena and had a super time. It's very difficult to get a sense of what it must actually have been like for the people who were there in it's hey day; the nobility watching, the gladiators fighting and the poor people who were sacrificed there. Time has moved on so much, and the change in times and surroundings of this enormous building somewhat lessens the impact of it all. Still, with a bit of thought and effort it is possible to remember and honour the people who lost their lives there over the years. After a few hours we moved onto more coffee and then the Palatine. This was a disappointment in many ways, largely due to the lack of signs and information (which was also strangely the case in the Vatican, St Peters and the Colosseum). Still we had a pleasant 2 hours strolling through the ruins, marvelling at how a pile of columns could just be left sitting around the ruins so casually! Lunch from a supermarket consisted of some rolls and salami, and then we fled the cold to a local hotel and hid in the lobby for a few hours.

Dinner time was calling, so we needed somewhere to go to decide where we would go to eat. Where else but the wine bar from the previous night! Safely ensconced again with a bottle (syrah this time from Lazio) we spent another two hours chatting to people from Seattle and then just watching the world go bar. Dinner was a plate of pasta in a nearby restaurant, followed by the bus home again. I have just downloaded a bunch of pictures onto my PC and at the same time, in the spirit of multitasking, have written this long blog! Tomorrow morning I will pick an image and stick the whole thing on a USB key and try and find a way to get on line and post it!