Rome is awesome. Busy last few days. Yesterday we went on a walking tour and saw the colosseum, mouth of truth, pantheon, and the roman forums just to name a few. Here are some fun facts we learnt (there was a ton of info - its why they say break all the tours up)

Colosseum: animal fights started the games entertainment - they even had giraffes fight one another, along with hippos and loins ... The one battle they had to cancel because it always ended the same was between lions and bears... Guess who always won ! The bear with one swift swipe to the lions head- apparently they have soft skulls.

Mouth of truth: people wait 2 hours sometimes to stick their hand inside this mouth and they say it's like a lie detector and it will bite the hand off if you lie. We learnt that this was actually an old sewer cover- the mouth is where the sewage would pour out... So it was deemed the a******. I feel ok not sticking my hand in there now.

Pantheon: wow, amazing. The dome is huge ! It was built in honor of the gods. It is the burial place of Raphael and Queen margarita (she has the pizza named after her !). The church is made out of one piece of solid concrete and cannot be replicated by any means today. There also a hole in the roof and when it rains it goes right on through.. I would like to see that.. There are drains placed throughout, as well the floor has a slight slant to it.

Roman forums: bunch of ruins that have been pretty beaten up due to fire and past battles. It used to be where public life of the city took place in roman times.

Also learnt about quite a few Emperors. Some of them were pretty insane. For example: one had a boat on a 50 football field long lake in his golden palace that was drawn by 1000 swans ... Yep crazy. Then the same emperor got drunk, kicked his pregnant fiancé to death and awoke the next morning and was like ohhh s***. Soo he sent his guards to find someone who looked like her... Well he got a 12 year old boy. So what does he do, castrates him throws a dress on and has a wedding. Yep pretty insane stuff, plus a TON more.

Today we went to the Vatican- its own little country inside of Rome with big tall walls surrounding the whole place with only 2 stupid entrances- one being the museum. Saw the bridge of angels, st. Peters, Castle Saint Angelo and the Sistine Chapel just to name a few.

Again... Learnt a ton of stuff. It was a long day. Also went to the BEST sandwich shop. Mine had smoked proschtoe, Brie, walnuts, olive oil, and rocket salad --- Devine !!! Brennin was also a huge fan of his sandwich- it had hot sauce and black stuff and some other stuff he doesn't remember.

Tomorrow we switch rooms again, all is good though because we have air conditioning !!!