Alex Inn 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 ...

... each. That is a lot of beer!. All that we have seen was great. But St. Peter's basilica was something else. The detailed work was a picture of perfection. We were in awe and the feeling was divine. We learnt a lot from here and some of the artwork were just amazing. We never got bored walking around and capturing every moment of this experience. A million photos later, we got hungry. Energy levels were low and suddenly the ...

... amazing pizza and gelati! We then walked thru a square where they played all kind of sports in Roman times and past a big governement type building on a hill and eventually past the roman forum. And finally, we ended at the Colosseum, which was cool to see lit up at night!  We then went back to the hotel and had our Italian dinner at about 9 PM. After that we stayed up for awhile and got to know one another.  On Monday, I was awakened to a pounding on my door from ...

... You can see inside the Vatican City from the top, and it's not really a city at all...just a bunch of gardens and a few buildings, but there's definitely a huge wall around the entire thing. The Vatican Museum is endless...I heard that there are 6,000,000 pieces of art in the museum...and if you were to read all of the descriptions of every piece of art, it would take you 10 years. Marcos and I walked around the entire Vatican ...

... out and do so. Finishing off in the Pope's old living quarters (which were not exactly humble) we finally made it into the Sistine Chapel which was amazing. Our guide explained to us where the process of electing the new pope took place and where they placed the chimney to burn the ballots for black or white smoke (which we had now all seen and found very interesting). From the Sistine Chapel we were allowed to bypass the line to take the group entrance into ...

... a surprisingly loud humming noise. Some parts were spoken too ... one guy sounded like Mr. Bean. Chelsea and I almost burst out laughing. We had some gelato after. Fior di latte (some type of cream?) and mitrillo (sp? I think it was blackberry). Very good stuff. After, we walked back to the hostel. Kristine and I walk fast so we ended up quite away ahead of Tiffani and Chelsea. This happened quite a bit - Tiffani and Chelsea later told us that every time we would bolt ...

... My husband had eye surgery so both him and myself are taking off work" day here though I could not for the life of me find a funny hallmark card to get them. Should be interesting as when I came home today I discovered my host mother trying to speak to the cat in growls and hissing. I think they were arguing over whether to watch spongebob or cnn. My host mother won as I could hear her shouting "I'm Ready, I'm Ready, I'm Ready" I look forward to seeing all of you saturday night

... to be. We got mush more information than if we had just wandered around on our own, and it was much more entertaining, as well. The Coliseum is an amazing engineering feat. It was built in only about 8 years. The history we got from our guide was fascinating. Some of Rome's emperors were sick puppies! At the end of our Coliseum tour, we learned that the price also included a tour of the Forum, just up the street. We ...

... Rome than I did of Florence. While visiting Rome the first time we were lucky enough to have some family members of my friend that were Italian and living in Rome. They acted as our guide so I didn't learn my way around as much. This time it was Cory and I and the map. It is a great test of a brand new marriage. If you can make it through map reading and being lost in a huge city you can do anything. We stopped at a church to try to ...

... but well appointed rooms and an excellent buffet breakfast. US$ 126.00 the night. That afternoon we spend strolling the Via del Corso, Spanish Steps (closed off, under renovation), The Quirinale Palace. On the elegant Via Condotti, Japanese are buying out the stock of Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Fendi and other classy stores. Everyone else is just window shopping. There's a huge Japanese school group at the Piazza di Popolo, they are probably on a field trip. The weather ...