Roma, Italy

Rome was my least favorite, only because it took 4 hours to get there by train, then we had to take four hours back to our town. It was hot, smelly, dirty, and we only got to see the colluseum and the ruins becuase we had about 5 hours to spend there. We got off the train then took the subway to the colluseum. It was cool because you walk out of the station and bam! there is the colluseum. It was pretty cool to see. Almost the entire building is made of bricks. John's brother in law Pete had a good comment...not only did they build it brick by brick, they also had to make the bricks first. Haha, I don't know why this suprised me to think, it's not like they had a Home Depot! One part that was lame was there were basically no signs telling you about the colluseum, you had to take the guided tour to get any of the info-boring! My favorite part was the pic of the "floor" of the colluseum - the floor itself was removed underneath was were they kept the fighters, slaves, and animals so you could see the walkways and cells.

We didn't stay long in there, once youre in youre pretty much done. We walked across the way to the ruins and hung out a bit. It was so hot the only thing that saved us was the little vendor selling frozen bottles of water.

A little about the trains...apparently Italians are not very concerned with proper sewage control. The train toilets have a white ball at the bottom. When you flush, the ball disappears and the waste is just dumped on the tracks below. It was a bit gross, to say the least. John said it was common knowledge that it was common courtesy to not use the bathrooms while you were at a stop, so that the people at the stations didn;t have to smell the pee and poop. Yuck! The train coming back from Rome didn't have the balls at the bottom so you look down the toilet and you just see the tracks zoomin on by!