When in Rome...

Wednesday, January 16th
We woke up early again this morning. I'm getting really tired of this early stuff, I'll tell you. This is supposed to be a holiday!! That means sleeping in. Not getting up at 6 am to make a 7 am water bus ride. But we didn't want to miss our ride so we snuck some breakfast from the breakfast bar that didn't open for another hour and a half and headed out, through the pigeonless St. Mark's Square! This isn't fair, even the pigeons get to sleep in. There is something seriously wrong with the world. We made it to the station nice and early and even had time to grab a cappuccino. As I'm sure you all realize now, this means standing at a counter and having it served to you in a cute china cup. None of this fast food "take away" coffee, we uncooth Americans are so in love with. And let me tell you, this coffee is amazing. Take every opportunity to try it.
Our train ride was about 4 1/2 hours long so LeAnne used the time to order another cappuccino in the dining car. When we got off the train it actually took us about 5 minutes to get to our Hotel!! Imagine!! When we got there, the lady kind of gave us a flashback of our hostel in Madrid but ended up being fairly nice. We dropped everything and ran out to see Rome. First stop: Colosseum!! To get there we had to take the metro which is the worst one yet. Everything here is dirty and covered with graffiti. There are only 2 metro lines which doesn't even begin to cover the city and they are jammed with people. Thankfully the Colosseum is right off of one of the few stops. We took lots of photos and goofed off by jumping off the stairs and laughing at Amanda trying to teach Nat how to do a cartwheel. I think by this time we are a little sight-seeing weary but it was still pretty cool. We were too late to go in and it would cost 11 EUR anyway so we decided to move on. The Sistine Chapel was on our list but since no one wanted to spend money to get inside, we realized there was no point in going. Instead, we shopped along the streets picking up last minute gifts and dodging raindrops. After a bit it really started to pour but we were so close to the Fontona di Trevi (I hope I spelled that right) that we kept going. It was well worth it. I don't know much about the history of it but legend has it that if you toss a coin into it, it will guarentee your return to Rome. So we faithfully tossed our last pennies in (*sniff*) and dared each other to jump in. The fountain is absolutely beautiful with a large pool and lots of statues, etc. among the waterfalls. Since Amanda's and LeAnne's boots were totally soaked and each step they took felt pretty squishy, we headed back to get dry before finding some dinner. There's a cute little cafe across the street from our hotel that we decided to try out. We thought we were getting pretty European savvy so when the bread came out we told the waiter that we didn't want it. He informed us that we could either take the bread or be charged a cover charge that would equal the price of bread. What a rip off!! We took the bread and made up for it by asking for butter and then oil and vinegar to dip it in. Our food was delicious and we had our last cappucino and then headed out to this internet cafe where we sit posting our life story for you all to enjoy. We're freezing cold when we could be home in our hotel and all cozy and warm in our pajamas. Hope we at least get some comments for all our efforts.