B&B University Rome

... government since the last real King of Italy abdicated in 1943. Silvio is king now, owns the largest private broadcasting companies and controls all the public ones. Soccer and game shows with big breasted women account for most of the TV programming. News is for Albanians.

The place can be so profound and so trivial. Piazza Navona, an oval laid out 2000 years ago as an arena, and occasionally flooded for battle re ...

... Terminal 2, so we said goodbye to Sue Ellen there and jumped out of her care and into the pouring rain. When we got inside the terminal, however, we found out that Alitalia had just moved to Terminal 4 – a 15-minute shuttle ride away! In the end, we were RUNNING to make our flight on time – but we made it!

Roma, Italia! Even from London, it's a huge change to be here. We arrived in Rome around 4:30pm, and it took some time for us to figure out how to ...

... up from below the stage. He also showed us where the lions entered and where the king sat. I thought it was so amazing that they had to bring the animals from Africa to fight! After the colliseum we got a tour of the palatino from a really an energetic tour gruide from Australia. I learned that the Palatino was where the first Roman tribe was found. He told us the story of Romulus (where Rome gets its name) and Remus ...

Acreditem último dia! Nem parece! Só faltava conhecer melhor a parte histórica. Coliseo, Fórum Romano e Palatino... fomo ainda no Museu do Capitólio. Para variar filas e mais filas. Mas o Euro Pass ajudou em alguns. Finalizamos o dia comprando alguns souvenirs ...

... as it is not supposed to be as busy. It was packed. It was designed as a palace and not a museum so corridors are narrow by museum standards. Will put my pictures up later of all the things I saw.

Today I will do St Peter's basilica as I lost the will to live yesterday as I had walked so much. Had to keep stopping walking back last night. Oh had a potato and cheese pizza... great stuff!

Had a quiet night ...

... s work "painted" on the ceiling. They actually don't call it a painting, but rather a fresco. A fresco has to be painted in tiny sections in order for the plaster to be the right temperature, which makes his work even more incredible, especially considering Michelangelo was more of a sculptor. The Sistine is famous for Michelangelo's pictorial culmination of the Renaissance, showing the story of creation, with a powerful ...

Hi Guys!! Well you'll be happy, and probably somewhat surprised judging from the succession of disastrous incidents that have befallen us up until now, to know that we have made it safely back to Italy! Our stopover in Athens and ferry ride back across to Italy were almost completely incident free (if you don't count accidently dropping my camera case overboard on the ferry back in order to get a good photograph of an impressive sunset!) From Bari (a place I have seen far ...

... s the view from Palatine Hill, amongst the gardens of a former emperor, looking out over the Colliseum and what is left of the real Caesar's Palace. Or maybe its the food, like finding the perfect panini sandwich and salad with a refreshing Belgian beer or the divinity found in the small cup of a cafe espresso. Yet, it may just be finally finding that classic, tucked away family run restaurant hidden at the end of a shadow engulfed ...

... experience in Rome for you. This way, you can close that chapter and wait anxiously for me to chat about Florence. Day Trips: Ostia Antica (40 minutes outside of Rome) Hadrian's Villa (Town of Tivoli, about 2 hours commute from Rome) Naples and Pompeii (1 hour to Naples, about 40 minutes to Pompeii from there) Major Sites in Rome: Colosseum Roman Forum Palatine Hill Pantheon National Museum of Rome Borghese Gallery, Villa Borghese Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel St. Peter's ...

... feasted in honor of their dead). From the Necropolis, we worked our way up to St. Peter's Tomb, on top of the Vatican Hill (the tomb is underneath Bernini's Baldacchino inside St. Peter's). There we saw, encased in Plexiglas, bone fragments believed to belong to St. Peter. According to Christian tradition and history, St. Peter was crucified upside down in Nero's Circus (today's St. Peter's Square) in 64 A.D. and buried in a nearby cemetery. In 330 A.D., Emperor ...