Okay, so laziness has gotten the better of me for the past few weeks, and I have neglected this blog. However, I intend to rectify this situation as much as possible with the next few entries.

So, in the last few days of our stay in Rome, we intended to go inside some of the famous churches and sites, like the Forum and Palatine Hill, but we ended up just walking through the markets and buying a few items of clothing (some harem pants) and going back to the hostel to begin our first official American Day. These are days that we dedicate to all of the American things we try to avoid on the other days. So, for lunch we had McDonald's hamburgers and cokes with a side of air-conditioning. However, the beggars walking up and down the rows of seats in the McDonald's were quite un-American, and put a small dent in our day. After lunch, we read some more. I started the fifth Song of Ice and Fire book, A Dance with Dragons, which consumed the remainder of the daylight. Around dusk, we decided it was time to eat again, as Americans do after a long day of laziness, and we headed out in search of food. We walked for a while, but everything looked very touristy and expensive so close to the train station. We decided to walk to the fountain from our first day, but there were some homeless men sitting and sleeping all around it, and we just walked back toward the hostel after filling our water bottles. We stopped and ate some lovely Indian food on our way back to the hostel, where we read some more and soon fell fast asleep.

The next day we devoted to more walking around the city. We walked a long lazy path to the Spanish Steps and the Villa Medici behind which we found the most wonderful park with long walkways and benches everywhere. We sat there for hours reading and listening to someone playing jazz music. It was surreal how sleepy and dreamy the place was. We stayed there until the sun started to set, and then set back out toward the hostel and made plans for the next day. On the way back to the hostel, we saw the fellows pictured drawing the Mona Lisa with sidewalk chalk. It was pretty amazing.