I came, I saw I crawled...

Frustration saw me turn to Phil's iPhone to try and write a blog. For my next travel adventures I will be less dependent upon poor or non-existent hostel connections by investing in a wireless keyboard for my Nokia.

So let's talk about Rome. Rome is a modern city welded onto the ruins and masterpieces of 2000+ years of history. Its chaotic and a death trap to cross the road as green-lights for walkers, red lights for cars, and pedestrian crossings mean nothing. It's a place where just when you start to feel jaded by seeing building after building and statue after statue, a masterpiece of sculpture and architecture will suddenly appear to scream at you 'pay attention' to my beauty, and blow away the cobwebs of cynicism.
We saw EVERYTHING in Rome, which means we were trigger happy tourists. The Spanish Steps, Il Trevi, The Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the gardens, etc etc..  I couldn't truly tell you what the stereotypical Roman looks like BUT I could tell you what brand of camera is most popular in the average hoarde of tourists...
 Without a shadow of a doubt my favourite spot was the Colosseum.We certainly saw enough of it - at night, during the day,  when sober, when drunk. It's a pull for tourists, a landmark among landmarks. For us blokes it reminds us of the manly things of sports and battles and lets us revel in blood and guts just like when we read about the Romans in the Horrible Histories as a child. It also gave me a moment of tourist-snobbery, previpusly unexperienced, as we were able to bypass the crowds for entry having bought our Colosseum tickets at massively reduced 'youth prices' from the Palantine Hill ruins.l It's rare for a Brit to admit to being delighted at not having to queue, but there it was, I was.
Doing things this way allowed us to view something remarkable in those Palantine Hill runis - it's only now on being reflective that I can appreciate how remarkable the town planning alone is - to see key society buildings within the same steetch of land that were from the opposite chronological ends of the Roman Empire (buildings from both the Romuleus and Nero Empires are on display) is fantastic in itself. I'd thought the Roman monuments had been all about the fun Phil and I had running up the mass of steps singing the Rocky theme music, but hindsight is a beautiful thing....
There are some other highlights to Rome worth mentioning and then there's 'The Tour'.
First, the highlights:

1. Food was a mixture of great and terrible cuisine. On Day 1 we found the first ever guidebook-recommended restaurant!Delighted and in my element, I found myself presenting 'Dar Poeta' to the camera as 'excatly what I was looking for' only to find we had to leave once we realised the PIZZA only establishment would not cater for our hankering for pasta.
However, their recommendation of Da Oliveria provided the best meal of Italy in sublime, homemade, fresh pasta courses for little expense.

2. Never go to a hostel with just a microwave for cooking facilities if trying to eat on the cheap. A microwave cannelloni (Phil) and a minestrone (for me) is not only depressing when in Italy, but truly expensive - Phil spent €9 with his extras!

3. Never expect everything I write about to be happy. While walking down the Colosseum we saw the chalk outlines on the road, police cars, and strewn clothing of a recent hit and run. Nothing in itself overly traumatic, but the next day we walked past the photo memorial to a girl with life in her eyes and warmth in her smile no older than us. Her positive, smiling face (she was proactive in getting cylce lanes int he area and it seems may have been knocked off her own bike) has been a chilling reminder to me since of the need to grasp everything with two hands as we'll never know just when this beautiful, fragile life will cease.

The Epic Tour:

Rome was the backdrop for one of the most American nights of my life. You know when your hostel is boring when you resort to attending the flyered for pub crawl entitled 'I came, I saw, I crawled' giving a free 'Jagerbomb for confirmation online' because its the only flyer your hostel has. Imagine how intrepid I was when viewing the Roman Gods knocking back a few beers in their heavily Photoshopped flyer and I read the very British words 'all the Carlsberg you can drink for the first hour'. Nevertheless, we paid our €20, got our free T-shirts and attended. What followed can only be described as a night of carnage. The first venue was a 'Scottish themed pub' where Phil and I played our very first competitve game of beer-pong and came a valiant second. We also knocked back the tour special Jagerbomb after Jagerbomb and spent the night getting progressively drunk with girl after girl from America.
I'm not going to kiss and tell as everything was banterful and under the influence. But the night did culminate in a typical 'Kid in the Candy Store' mentality and an 8ft speaker 'accidentally' crashing onto my head. We made some good friends that night, even if we had very sore heads in the morning....