Tuscany and Rome!

Greetings from Rome!

Today is our last full day in Rome before we head down to southern Italy. I love Rome! Everywhere you look there is something new and great to see. We have met lot's of people too, suprisingly enough a lot of people from Canada.

So we have been touring the big sights and enjoying some great food and wine! I am in my element here because most people dont eat dinner until 9 or so, so when in Rome...... I love being able to actually say that, lol. So we have been to the Vatican and went to St. Peters Basilica and climbed the 300 plus stairs in a narrow winding staircase to go to the top of the dome, the views made it worth it. We also went to the Vatican Musuem and seen the Sistine Chapel. We have seen many piazzas and monuments. We went to the Pantheon, Collessum, Palantine and to the Trevi Fountain in the day and in the night. The fountain was one of my must sees on our trip and lived up to my expectations. We have sat on the Spanish steps and people watched and seen all the vendors try to sell everything from beer to roses.

Last night we went on a pubcrawl which was truly a good time, not as much fun this morning, lol! They gave you free drinks at the first bar which was nice because drinks here in some restaurants can be as expensive as 9 Euros per drink. We danced and took part of a chugging contest against some other girls. They seperated the guys and the girls and had 2 seperate contests. I can proudly say I won and got a t-shirt for a prize. Overall it was fun!

Before Rome we were in Tuscany staying on a local vineyard which is a former castle and had great hosts the lady would come and make us breakfast in the morning. We didn't stay in the main part but we did stay in a cute little villa which can sleep like 10 people and Mandy and I lucked out and had it to ourself for the 3 nights we were there. We spent most of our time at the pool working on our tans. One day we did get on a bus and rode up the winding hills to Montepulciano which was very cute and had amazing views of the Tuscan countryside. We bought a couple of bottles of local wine to enjoy over our dinners. Then we had an interesting bus ride back because our bell by ouer seats didnt work so we rode all the way into Chiusi about and extra 10 or 15 minutes further, where the bus driver told us that there was no bus stop by where we were staying and you could only get there by taxi. We tried to explain to him that we got on the bus there that morning but he just looked at us like we were crazy. After some discussion and getting on the same bus again he stopped and our stop which had an actual bus stop sign and we made the 1 km walk from the main road to our villa.

Overall Rome actually Italy in general is great and I love it!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow we catch a trian from the massive train station here in Rome, this thing is probably bigger then the airport at home and we head more south here in Italy. Where we will probably spend days at the beach in warm weather, it's a rough life I know:)

Ciao,
Kristy