July 22nd, 1998

Our initial plans were to go to Pisa on the way to Rome. The leaning tower of Pisa was something that I had wanted to see. I knew that it would add a few hours to our trip but I thought it would be worth it. After the extremely hot train-ride to Venice, I was easily convinced that we should take the shorter route. Also, by going the shorter route, we would be assured of getting a Eurostar train which is a lot nicer and has air-conditioning on the whole train. And it actually works. We were also able to sleep in because of that decision too. It was definitely the best choice. Our train wasn't to leave until around 12:30, so we spent a leisure morning eating breakfast and taking in our last sights of the city. When we got to the train station we had to make reservations for the train. Unfortunately, all of the first class seats were taken. But we were able to get second class, no-smoking seats that 4 together in one spot and 2 together in another. We learned that just because the numbers on the tickets are together doesn't mean the seats are together. Like the seats that Jenny and I got were 91 and 92. Oddly enough though, seats 90 and 92 are together with 91 sitting behind those 2 seats. The train was barely even half full though, so we just moved up and sat at the seats near the Ytreeides. Jessica decided that she wanted to make up some new card tricks. It was so funny because she kept on messing up. She started out one of her tricks where she had Jonathon pick a card from the deck and hold on to it. Then she separated the rest of the deck into face down stacks that comprised of rows and columns. Then, when she wasn't looking, she had Jonathon place the card on the top of one of the stacks. Then she asked him to tell her which row of stacks the card was in. After she discarded some of the cards that she new were not the right ones she started making separate stacks of cards again face down. After she was done, she asked Jonathon to tell her which column of stacks the card was in. Since the cards were face down, Jonathon obviously didn't know. She actually made that mistake a couple of times. It was funny to look at her when she realized her mistake. You had to be there. It was very funny. It definitely entertained us on the trip.

When our train arrived in Rome, we had to take a metro to our hotel. We got off at the wrong exit and had to get back on the metro and go back one stop. The hotel wasn't quite as close to the metro as it looked on the map. We had to walk up a steep hill to get to it.

Rome Metro Ticket

The Hotel Colosseum

This hotel had remote controls for the air-conditioners. But the odd thing was, that it didn't have remotes for the TV. Before I forget, I want to mention that the toilets were different than what we have in the US. It seemed that in London, most of the time the handles to flush were on the left side instead of the right side.

And most everywhere else, you didn't actually have a handle, you had a big lever button kind of thing on the wall directly behind the toilet in the center. Almost all of the hotels we stayed at in Europe had bodays. This hotel had it's bathroom that had one continuous tile floor, even to the shower. There was nothing besides a curtain that separated the shower from the rest of the bathroom. It was also a slow draining shower, so when Jenny and I took showers back to back, water pretty much filled the rest of the bathroom as well as the shower.

Roman Shampoo

Alimentari means Grocery Store

After we rested a little we took off on foot to have dinner at a place that was recommended by the hotel. Before we made it to our restaurant, we spotted a grocery store and decided to pick up a few things. An old married couple ran the store and could barely speak any English. We tried communicating with them and they told us their daughter married someone in Austin or Houston, Texas. We weren't quite sure. It was really fun talking to them.

We took our groceries back to the room and then headed off to the restaurant. Arnie and I ordered Coca-Cola Grande and we got a big liter of coke a piece. The bottle was kind of neat, so I saved it to bring it home. Before I forget, they don't know what Diet Coke is but they know what Coca-Cola Light is. After dinner, it was fairly late and we had to start the next day very early, so we headed back to our hotel and hit the hay.

Now there's a Coke