Forever Paisley

Day One, brought to you by Angie

Well after I showed up Al took me on a very quick and sweaty tour of Florence. I saw the Duomo and was just amazed by the culture of Italy. We went out to lunch and I had my first legal glass of wine that tasted wonderful. We saw the markets and then caught some shade, where a man from India (paul) tried to pick us up and had some wonderful conversation topics… “I like The Rock, who’s your hero?” or “I sell jackets” or my favorite “Italian woman are like (he laid his hands flat on his chest), but you are like (then he made a sign indicating big boobs), that’s why I like Americans.” Needless to say… we got rid of him.

Then after more hastling from Italian Stalians me and Al got on the train to Rome. Here I tried to catch a quick cat nap because I haven’t slept much, but Al made it pretty difficult towards the end. We got to our hostel and what do you know they didn’t keep our reservations… so they set us up down the street. We met a group of 5 girls from North Carolina who were really funny and entertaining and they even cooked for us! The hostel owner, Ivano, was a very friendly and interesting man. He likes to talk a lot and it’s very fun to listen to, even though his soul purpose in life is sex. We got up early this morning and toured the Vatican with one of the girls we met. Then we went back to the hostel to collect our stuff to move to the next hostel. Ivano was there and we shot the shit with him for an hour or two, mainly he tried to convince us that monogamy is impossiple.

Our hostel that we’re at now and it’s much more roomier, but it carries a certain smell to it that I don’t care for. At like 4 me and Al headed out again and pretty much tackled all of northern Rome. It’s surprising how much you can see in so little time because everything is so close to eachother… not to mention so beautiful. We got a tasty dinner and then headed home, stopping at the super market to get some cheap eats. I picked up a bottle of wine this is no use to me because we don’t have a corkscrew at our hostel. What I want to know is how can someone live in Italy without a damn corkscrew!? I will fix this problem by running back to the market. Well tomorrow our plans are to hit up the Colloseo and the Roman Forum and then at 9pm Italy plays the U.S. in the World Cup so it should be a pretty eventful night. Ciao!

Day Two, brought to you by Allison

We got up pretty early this morning to take advantage of the free breakfast in our hostel, which ended up being twinky-like things and some other processed garbage. We left our hostel and ventured off to the Colliseum and the Palantine, they were absolutely HUGE. The Colliseum used to seat 50,000 people, Angie of course compared this to the attendance at Banaroo which is 30 acres of land. Much of it is quite weathered, but looking at the remnants leaves your imagination to wonder just how amazing it was when it was built in the FIRST CENTURY. The Palatine, which was the residence of Ceaser, had a lot of tunnels and pieces of walls. It covers so much land I cant even imagine having so much space as a “house”. On our way back to our hostel we stopped at a palace built for a man who believed himself to be a god when in fact he was not at all. Besides a few standing structures the area is mostly a park.

It is blazing hot in Rome today so we are moving slowly, but still going nonetheless. Angie is in the hostel napping, and I am writing to you instead 🙂 Tonight is the USA vs Italy football game so we are going to go to a pub and hope for a victory. Ivano informed us it would be impossible for the US to win and offered me a bet of €500 if we beat them. The Italians sure are confident. No matter what the outcome we should have a good time.

Since we have done most of the sight seeing we wanted,tomorrow we are going to go to the market, hit up the Pantheon, and then meet up with one of Angies friends from MSU and go out. Next we are off to Athens!!!

Cherrettie’s