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Published: August 10th 2008
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Mmm Dessert
Enjoying the Tuscan meal in Florence. I need to catch up here! This journal is the only way that I am keeping track of what day it is!
It's about 5:35pm and I am sitting in our little cabin listening to the birds chirp. I've heard some people bitch a lot about the accomodations and contiki tours and I wish that they would just get over themselves! This is an awesome trip!
Anyways, back to the Tuscan meal in Florence. There were so many courses! One free (or included, would be the most accurate) bottle of wine amongst the four of us. We started with small pieces of bread with salami, ham, and parmasan type cheese. So good! After that came pasta- ravioli, spagetti, and some sea shell looking green things. All good, even with me not liking pasta all that much. Then came the meat portion of the meal. On the platter there was sausage, ribs, chicken, roast beef, and roast pork. Yum! Finally was dessert which was like an ice cream spice cake. Good, again. Then we all toasted with lemon chello (ick).
The one girl working there was from Regina! How cool is that?
After supper came another walk in
The Forum
Where Julius Ceaser walked. the rain with no umbrella. There I am again looking very un-classy. Oh well. We dropped quite a few people off at the coach. Only about 12 of us went to the Space Electronic Discoteque. It was like 2 nite clubs in one. The lower level was pretty funky- a really long bar with fish tanks all along the bottom, kareoke with a really big screen, and some seating areas as well. Mecha gave us all a shot when we first got there. Something fruity and tasty. They work on a card system there. Basically you get a card and they punch it after each drink instead of taking money at the bar. After 3 drinks you go and pay and then get a new card. Our first drink was included in our 12 euro excursion cost.
After a while the upstairs part opened up which was basically a big dance floor. It was so warm in there. It was actually more like a huge orgy with the way that people were dancing. There were locals there and some other contiki tours. They were also taking pictures of people that you could buy and they put them on a
Collasal!!!
Outside of the Collaseum. big screen. There were a couple of our group that got put up.
After a while people started leaving- around 12:30. Four of us grabbed a cab back to the campsite. It cost about 22 euro. The meter actually said 16 when we got there but the driver pressed some button and made it 22. The bouncer at the bar warned us that they would rip us off. Oh well, I guess. We got home safely.
Got up, showered (used the public washrooms/showers instead of the one in the cabins), and ate breakfast at 6:45 (early!). The coach left at 7:45. We got called back to our cabins before we left because our cabin-mates didn't clean up well enough. By this time we were getting really frustrated with some people on our tour. Some people had a bad habit of talking while Mecha was trying to talk to us on the coach. He stops talking now and sits down instead of finishing saying what he has to say. It sucks for him and the people that actually want to hear.
Anyways, enough of that. We were off to Rome! Time to find out what "do what the
Romans do" really means. It was a short drive day so we only made one stop along the way.
We drove into Rome and Simon drove us around so that we could see some sights, which is always nice. I was on a good side of the bus for taking pictures. Roman architecture is awesome!! The oldest place so far, which makes it really cool.
He dropped us off at the collaseum- which is huge, massive, and impressive!! Mecha walked us down the road to where our Imperial Walking Tour would start. We had about 1 1/2 hours to kill first so everyone split up. I bought a calzone and some water. Then we tried our best to find some grass to sit on (definately not like London in regards to parks). We found a park-type place and sat down in the shade. It was HOT ONE. Rome doesn't seem to have many patches of grass. It was neat too because the 'benches' looked like they were ruins from buildings that had fallen over.
Then we walked towards the Forum where our tour would start. The tour was great! The tour guide was a very funny, short,
Make a Wish!
Trevvie Fountain Italian lady. The Forum is basically a bunch of uncovered ruins from the Imperial Era- it's about 15 feet below the city's current level. There are 2 levels of cities underneath but they do not want to lose what they have already uncovered by digging further. The gravity of how old (2700 years ish) the ruins were was hard to grasp. We walked on the same stones as Julius Ceaser did! We seen a shrine to him, learnt about how they were pagans at first and then when they converted to Catholicism they used the same buildings. This explains why a lot of their churches look like temples. I got so many great shots! They also had a few big archways like the Arc d' Triumph in Paris that have pictures on them. A lot of the old buildings have small bricks on the outside, but would have originally been covered in marble. However, the marble was reused a lot. It's kinda crazy to think of how they would just build a new city on top of an old city!
Our guide took us into the collaseum as well. Looking down where so many fights and theatrical events occured,
Art for Sale
A common site in Europe. it was actually easy to imagine everything that had gone on there in the past. Like the roar of the crowds could still be heard if you listened hard enough. To think of how many people died there is unreal. There is now only one entrance whereas before they would have used 88 arch walkways. All of the seats have been removed too, I think because of the whole marble thing.
It is basically 2 ampitheatres together. Part of the one side is missing, obviously, and the floor seemed to be as well so they rebuilt a small part of it so that people could better imagine what it would have been like originally. We could see the whole passage way part that would ahve been undearneath the floor- where the lions would have been kept. I want to learn more about Roman history now! This trip really has rekindled my interest in history. I should watch 'The Gladiator".
Afterwards we met Mecha and everyone else at 6:00. After walking around in the heat, we had to bust our butts to catch the coach at 7:00. On our brisk walk we stopped for a minute to take a
Little Cabins
Our campsite in Rome. look at the Trevvie Fountain. We threw 2 coins over our shoulders- one for a wish and one for coming back to Rome again. Then we walked past the Pantheon, which is a big old church.
Then we kept walking and caught the coach and came to the campsite. It's all on different levels here. The cabins are all at the bottom of the hill, you go up and there is bathrooms, then up some more an there is laundry, up some more there is a discoteque, and then phones, and finally the bar,store, and pizzaria.
We didn't end up getting to the campsite until 8:45 because traffic was rotten. It was a long day and everyone was fairly cranky. We decided to all go up to the pizzaria and have supper together. Mecha got us a 'deal' of a pizza and a pop. I had the diavloa - "the devil" I was told. It's basically hot salami and cheese. We had a good time. Some people stayed to party but Karen and I ducked out early.
We slept in this morning! Hopefully that never happens again. We set our alarm for 5:45 and didn't get up until 7:00! We missed breakfast and skipped out on showers. Now we have an agreement with Gloria to check on each other in the morning.
Going to finish writing about my Rome adventure later. Time for bed!
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