4.30am and i get the joy of being awake and packing my bag into my friend claires mums car ready to head off to the airport :( pulled up to leeds airport got all our luggage out the car said our goodbyes and wandered to the terminal for our flight....upon getting to the entrance to the airport that was it s***! Id left my mobile phone in the car and claires mum had drove off after a few tireing sweaty moments of running i finally reached the car being all bugged by security for stopping to meet me eek! But i had my phone all was good....considering my ID and bank card were with my phone tho i think my slight panic was definently acceptable. Tried to get some sleep on the plane after check in but cheaper flight means there were no blinds so the sun was shining in my face :( got to rome and gor a quick train to the central station there and then had to get another train, but a better train, an amazing train, a double decker train!!!! One more feat ticked off my bucket list :p we had to go back on ourselves to get to the station where the campsite we were staying was, which was a little annoying but hey ho, got to the station tottled off and started walking in the boiling heat up this dirt track thing to the campsite. We were to meet our group with Expat Explore here in about 40 minutes time. En route to the campsite we bumped into Laurel who was randomly on the same trip so we got chatting with her while we waited for the group to arrive. in this 30 minute time period i had already been bitten sevrel times on my back by mozzies :( this is clearly going to be a running trend damn my tastey blood. We met the rest of the bus of the expat explore crew and settled into out campsite home, which was basically a kewl prefab with a kitchen and everything shweet! We went for our dinner that was included, with our aussie friend Laurel and her room mate Hannah and got chatting to a few more people. We stocked up on as much food as possible before going to the supermarket to get a few beers and coming back to chill on our porch, chatting and getting eves dropped by a hedgehog (which aparently means we would have good luck the next day woop woop). Our first full day in rome and we were up and out at 8am to meet up witha gentleman for our included walking tour. The tour was pretty good found out you can drink any of the water from the plethera of fountains in rome as its all fresh which was useful as it was bloody boiling. Saw the spanish steps, the trevvy fountain and got dropped outside the forum which is where we decided to go to instead of paying the €39 for the guided tour of the vatican. The forum was really cool lots of old ruins but the real reason we bought a ticket there was because the line was shorter and it also included the roman colleseum :) what a magnificant building the colleseum is jesus the roman empire was amazing they had trap doors and loads of crazy crazy stuff that you could never imagine and this was like before the time of 'jesus' that to me is totally insane that anyone was the advanced at that time. We relaxed in the colleseum for a bit then came out to do some tourist shopping aka some 'david' boxers and apron to dress in on the evening for the campsite clubs cross dressing party, which im sure would be the best way to know everyone. When we tiredly arrived back at campsite roma we were absoloutly exhausted and had a quick nana nap before heading out to the club. when we arrived we realised the club was filled with nob head top deck drunkards but had a totally epic night dancing and what not and i do believe i enjoyed the stuffed crotch i had a little too much :p we tottled off to bed when security kicked us out and shouted at us. The next morning we had a little bit of a sleep in as we had a trip to pompeii sprted for the next day :) nice and rested we jumped on the coach for the 3 hour trip to pompeii some sort of movie was put on the coach but the bus appeared magic and just made me sleep :p we arrived at pompeii which appears to be in the most unlikely place ever! We had our own personal tour guide take us round who was a very italian guy, only nice and friendly. OMG pompeii is phenomenal if you get a chance, go there!! When this place was uncovered some 4000 or so years after it was covered by the volcanic ash, what they uncovered was more advanced than their society was at the time :O they had the brains to go to england to get the lead which they produced at the time and made it into pipes for the indoor plumbing they had, they had indoor toilets and amazing pictures and sliding doors and stuff that may sound like nothing but you just cant even imagine how many thousands of years ago all of this was created.I truly think if the roman empire still ruled the roost we'd all actually have hover boards and flying cars and stuff :p. We also found lots of concrete c*** ....which in those times ws there to indicate that there was a w**** house there, this obviosuly for me was a great invention seeing c*** on the roads and hanging off buildings :p the petrified bodies wernt as important to pompeii as i would have first imagined, i mean sure they are an amazing thing to behold just pompeii is soo fascinating even without them. Theres one body where u can see the curled up toe and the bones are visible through the ash exterior soooo wierd!!! After pompeii we thanked our tour guide and b*****ed off across the road to treat ourselves to some pizza or pasta of which i choose a carbenara which tasted a bit like ermmmm hard goo, the texture was all off but it still tasted ok so i diddnt care. We jumped back on our coach to head home this time entertained by the bloody bollywood version of pride and prejeduce very very strange and wierdly very soothing, sleep again it was for me :p. We got back pretty late so just had a few beers and chatted ready for our 7am start for breakfast just before heading on out to Venice. At this point my mozzie bites were easily in the double fugures and swollen as usual i believe im infected as i have a wierd habbit of swelling insanely when a mozzie so much as looks at me :(. Venice may be a bit of a horror u know with me, heat and lots of water surely a mozzies wet dream :( ah well onwards and upwards. Rome you were pretty awsome but ur residence need a little attitude tweaking if u dnt like tourists move away cos being rude is just well ruuude :p come at me venice!!!