when in rome... get fat

Ciao again. It is very late at night here so if I skip anything important (which I am sure I will ) I am sorry. It might be easier to update you all in a few highlights.

1. Laura and I are getting worse at english every day. staying with and talking with non native english speakers causing a certain simplification of our sentences and an over pronunciation of hard words. Instead of, do you wanna go to the store? we now say, we will go to the store now?

2. Italian food wins all of europe. (so far). in fact I am having trouble concentrating because there is a bag of freshly baked bready things on the table ready for our train ride tomorrow that we picked up from a night bakery right after they were cooked. we have eaten multiple kind of pasta, all delicious, wonderful pizza, delicious chicken thing, good wine, a canoli, pasta salad, and of course gelato(i) every day. best gelato flavors include raspberry, nutella, and chocolate strawberry mix. You may be advised to pass on stracciatella (sp?) and black cherry.

3. couch surfing is a success! Our first host, Giuseppe, was a student writing his thesis at the university, very sweet if not somewhat confused by some of our english. Our current host, fabrizio, is wonderful and very generous and helpful and bought us dinner twice (despite our attempts to pay).

4. Rome is pretty cool. Saw the colosseum, pretended to be roman people down in the forum, checked out the pantheon, sat in multiple giant fountains, saw some lizards at the park, and today explored the vatican and that churchy place with all the paint on the ceiling. Had an insane tour guide who divulged too much about her fantasies with the naked men painted on the ceiling.

5. I touched a roman pigeon. didnt even see me coming.

6. There are 135 spanish steps. (that might actually be wrong, i dont remember, but we counted very carefully). its good to make sure on things like this. dont believe any guidebook that tells you other than what laura and avalon report.

6.2 this was forgotten from previous entry; in florence i tripped over a giant road sign and it fell into the road and almost hit an innocent scooterist. but i dashed out and saved the day by picking it back up.

Sorry if too long. will now abbreviate sentences. love to all. still safe. halfway mark today!!

av

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Part of trip: The Grand Tour

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