Okay, so I haven't posted anything in a few days, but I am still alive, I assure you. So, our last day in Naples we climbed to the crater at the top of Mount Vesuvius and visited the archaeological site of Herculaneum (Ercolano Scavi) and finished the night off with drinks with the friends we'd made in Naples. For some reason, there was no bartender at the hostel that night, so I began making my own drinks and attempted to pay the receptionist for them, but she just told me not to worry about it. So, we enjoyed a night of completely free alcohol and suffered the consequences the next morning when we rose early for our train to Rome. The train was stifling hot, as is all transportation in Italy. But when we arrived in Rome, we were amazed by how easy everything was to find. Our hotel was literally across the street from the station. You could see it as soon as you stepped outside. So, we went and dropped our stuff off at the hotel and decided to wander the area until 3:30 (check in time). We walked back through the train station, and Carrie pointed to a store and said "we should check this out; I've seen this store everywhere." I couldn't recall having seen it before, but I went along with it. It took me a while to realize that what she had taken for the store's name was actually the Italian word for sale, "saldi." That gave me a good, long laugh. After that, we checked in at the hotel (after waiting in the un-air-conditioned lobby for two hours watching cheesy Italian soaps and hoping the extremely intense Italian proprietor did not devour our souls). She finally showed us to our room which is vivid yellow with very unusual paintings of stick figures in unusual fighting and dancing poses all around the walls in bright colors. There were five beds, and I collapsed on one. We greeted a small, blonde Australian who was in the bed closest to the door, and then I proceeded to pass out for a few hours. Later, I was awakened by another traveler being dropped off in our room. He was a young Icelandic fellow named something absolutely impossible to spell or pronounce. He proposed that we all go for a walk as he was only in Rome for the night before flying back to Iceland after a nearly yearlong stay in Milan. We agreed, and we walked the streets of Rome for several hours in the dark. It was lovely beyond compare and uncrowded. There was a pleasant breeze, a welcome relief from the sweltering heat of the day. We ate gelato as we walked and looked at the monuments and talked about how different all of our lives were because of the places we live.

Carrie and I slept in this morning. We didn't get out until around 1 pm, during the worst of the heat. And we didn't intend to be out for long, but the streets just kept beckoning us further out, and we kept giving in. We saw dozens of piazzas, churches, monuments, statues, ruins, fountains, etc. It was overwhelming and beautiful. We drank the most amazingly cold and crisp water from the beautiful public fountains and ate terrible street food and I got a sunburn so terrible that huge welts and blisters raised up all over my back and shoulders. We watched as this crazy old Italian woman screamed in Italian and swatted women on the butt as her dress fell off her shoulders and her wrinkly breasts spilled out all over the place. Everyone ran away from her, this hunched little wisp of woman, as if she posed some real threat. Then, at one site Carrie and I were snapping a photo, and these two very greasy men dresses in poorly fitted plastic gladiator costumes dragged us to the middle of the piazza and made us take pictures with them for which the (of course) demanded an exorbitant price. It was actually kind of scary, though we should have just told them to leave us the f*** alone. Oh, and I can't foget the precious cats that we met. In this particular ruin in Rome, a local shelter sponsors a bunch of cats who live there. There are signs posted all around with thier names and photos on them, and these babies just get to louge around in the Roman ruins all day! It was so perfect!

So, after our long walk, we were exhausted, so we sat at a fountain for about an hour cooling off and headed back to the hotel where we relaxed and read for a while before taking a late dinner at a terrible little Latin American restaurant. When we sat down they served us these terrible spicy little corn pellets with a flavorless pink dipping sauce. And then Carrie's appetizer turned out to be steamed chalk covered in a yellow chalk sauce with half of a dark rubbery boiled egg on top. Our entrees were okay, but did you know that they charge you a fee for using their silverware in restaurants here!? That blows my mind. And I realized (to my own horror) that the thing that I miss the very very most about the US is…unlimited refills. How American of me, right? Our Australian roommate didn't even understand that concept when I was complaining to here. It made me feel like an entitled b******. At least I haven't started yelling at receptionists yet. So, now I am lying in my hotel bed listening to the sound of "When the Saints Come Marching In" being played over and over and over again (as they are want to do), and thinking about tomorrow—the Coliseum, Forum, and Palatino Hill, I think it will be. And maybe even some catacombs.