Rome Day 2 and a few personal notes

Hi Everyone,

Eric and I are working on two separate computers because the internet cafe closes in 20 minutes, so there may be some overlap.

First, I have to tell you about the rest of our day yesterday. We had a fabulous, romantic dinner at a place called That's Amore. Now, of course this place was geared towards tourists, but we still thought it was so much fun. Red and white checkered table cloths, candles dripping from wine bottles on the tables, and yummy, yummy food. I had gnocchi with gorgonzolla sauce and Eric had a calzone. Hanging on the wall were black and white photographs of famous people who have eaten in the restaurant, such as John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Lauren, and a very young Sean Connery. It was fun to look at all of those photos, especially the one of John Wayne cooking spaghetti in the kitchen. It made me think of Dad and all the John Wayne movies I watched with him when I was younger.

Today was a day of "Wow!" We walked down to the Collosium (I think I spelled that wrong), and really, all you can say is wow! It was neat to see Eric so excited, remembering his childhood adventures, and trying to recreate photos from when he was a kid. I loved the Collosium - it was impressive. From there, we wandered around the Forum, the Palatine, Circus Maximo, and all sorts of ruins. Eric was like a kid on a playground, and it just made me smile. He had so much fun (and me too!) The only drawback was the heat. It is so freakin' hot here. And you know us Texans, the way we cope with heat is to crank up the air conditioner. But air conditioning seems to be a rare treat in Europe. Thankfully, our room here has it. So we partook in the tradition of the afternoon siesta, and cooled off for a couple of hours.

We headed back out around 8 pm, and the temperature was much cooler. That made it more fun to walk around. The lady running our hotel recommended an evening walk to take to a couple of different squares. It was fun to people watch, and to see how many people are still out and about, even now at almost midnight. We had a somewhat disappointing dinner - but I wasn't too surprised because it was in a very touristy spot. Our friend Rick (aka Strayshot) would have been devastated - when I asked for ketchup, I was brought a bottle called "Mato Mato" and printed all over the bottle was the word "Squiz" which I took to mean squeeze. But let me tell you, this was the grossest ketchup I've ever had. I guess Mato Mato was better than a menu item we'd seen earlier in the day which had "sheass" sauce on it. We had a good laugh over that, and avoided that particular item. :-) Afterward, we stopped for gelato. We're having fun trying all of the different flavors.

That's about it for today. Tomorrow we head to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. We are looking forward to it. For anyone headed to Rome, we strongly recommend the Roma Pass. It's very similar to the Paris Museum Pass, in that it allows you to skip ahead in line. That alone is worth the 20 euros the pass cost. Let me tell you, it wouldn't have been too much fun to stand in the blazing sun for an hour waiting to get into the Collosium. But the pass gets you into your first two sites for free, and then the rest of the sites are discounted, AND you can ride the bus and the metro for free.

Hope everyone is doing well. Here are a couple of personal messages:

Dad - Your comment was so funny, because I had just been discussing something very similar with Eric while we were walking today - something about how we are really at home and just posing in front of a blue screen. :-) xoxoxo

Mom - at last count, we have about 2000 pictures, so we are definitely taking tons. I think you and Dad should visit Switzerland and Rome. You would both like Rome too. But skip Milan. xoxoxoxo I miss you guys!

Julie - I don't know if Josh got ahold of you, but there are birds living in the hanging plant basket on our balcony. They have built a nest and laid eggs. This is OK with us, so don't worry if you are unable to water that plant because there are baby birds (or eggs) in there. Thanks for taking over the cat7plant care while Josh is gone, and we hope everything is going well at summer school.

Lillian - Thank you, thank you for the tickets to the palace in Venice! We are very excited about the tour and we will let you know how it goes.

Kristin - We're glad that you are enjoying our blog, and we owe you a big thank you for all of your help with getting us started on blogging. It's fun to see how many people are in the internet cafes working on their blogs. We've had many conversations with other people about which cities have cafes with the abilities to upload pictures (because many places won't let you). Hope you guys are well!

Domecq - are you still out there? Hope you are doing well!

Rick - enjoy some ketchup for me!