Rome, Italy (June 23-25)

About 30 seconds after we got off the train we run into Brookie's friend Lexi. They both were studying in Greece together and Lexi was going to spend some time with another friend from KU who was studying in Italy for the semester. Lexi had flown into Rome the day before where she was supposed to meet her friend. BUT her friend had run off to Florence (or somewhere around there) and forgot to tell Lexi.

Lexi knew we were going to be in Rome but I don't think she knew when. I was glad we were able to meet up with her, I would have hated for her to spend 10 days in Rome alone...

She seriously just walked to the train station and saw there was a train coming from Milan and thought she would see if we were on it.

Once we picked her up and got her luggage from the hostel she stayed at the night before we were off to check into our hostel (and see if they had an extra bed for Lexi). We were in luck! Lexi had to stay in a room down the hall, but at least we were in the same place.

After a conversation with another crazy from college freshman from Texas we headed out to go to the Spanish steps (and ice cream). We decided to sit and people watch for a while. Of course there were vendors out selling random crap for 8 times what it would have cost to buy in the US. As we were sitting on the steps one of the vendors came running as fast as they could down the steps with a giant bag of whatever he was selling - followed by about 40 of his closest friends. It was really kinda interesting to watch these grown men run from the cops like that.

Here is us on the Spanish Steps. Can you see how pale and fat I look in comparison to these hottt college co-eds? (In my defense they had been in Greece for the last month soaking up the sun and eating nothing but bread, water, and olives.)After the steps we found a place for dinner and then went for more ice cream - the ice cream just happened to be at Trevi Fountain. The fountain is so beautifully lit up at night. And it was actually pretty cool (temperature wise) once the sun went down and there was a little bit of a mist coming from the fountain. We sat down and enjoyed our ice cream and people watched some more before we headed back to the hostel for the night.

The next morning we got up and headed out to Vatican City. We got all the way there and then realized that we had to be on the exact opposite side to actually get in. They wouldn't really let us take pictures of anything cool in the HUGE museum (that and I wasn't very smart and didn't charge my camera battery...) so I didn't really take any pictures inside but I did have to get a picture of this guy:
He reminds me of the guy that rides the dog in the movie the Labyrinth (staring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and the Muppets). All of the guards in Vatican City are Swiss, go Switzerland!

** Future Home Side Note - When I get my faux castle in Kansas I'm going to have a guard for my giant front door that looks like this. Although I might have to red-neck him up a little bit. His pants will actually be MC Hammer pants from the 90's, his spear will actually be a shot gun, and his hat will be some sort baseball cap put on sideways with the bill super flat.

We were able to spend some time in St. Peter's Cathedral. WOW, it's HUGE! Again, I wasn't able to take very many pictures because I had no camera battery but I made sure to take a few good ones.

Here's Brookie and I outside of the cathedral:
After we left Vatican City we went a couple blocks and found a cute little place to have lunch. We spent a whole lot of money on some mediocre food but Brookie and Lexi got hit on and we learned that Las Vegas is in California ('cuz I don't know where Vegas is...). The rest of the day we walked around and tried to get Brookie a Gucci purse for 10 Euros. She was unsuccessful but Lexi had a great time watching her pit all the vendors against each other.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Colusium. This place probably isn't much bigger then the Sprint Center but it was kinda creepy to think about all the things (and people) that died there. I wonder just what it looked like thousands of years ago. And the stairs are crazy! They are about twice as tall as stairs are now and half as wide.

Here the view from the cafe we had lunch at. Again, Brookie and Lexi worked the waiter over pretty good. Brookie even got an envelope and stamp from him. The food was very good as well (honestly, can you get bad food in Italy?). I had gnocchi palodoro (or something like that).

After lunch we walked around to find Brookie a charm for her bracelet and finally found one back at the train station. We then headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags. Lexi decided to come with us to London since she still hadn't heard from her friend so we had to book her a flight and bed at our hostel and then headed back to the train station to catch the tram to the airport.

After a couple little issues getting checked onto the flight we walked around the galley to see if we needed any duty free items and then walked through security (and got stamps in our passport!!) and waited for the flight to board.