• This bus thing is getting old.
• Kate put on Barbara Streisand whining something or other.
• What did we do to deserve that?
• I thought the Aussies were going to set the bus on fire.
• I wish Ben were here to give me a backrub. Seven hours a day on a coach is hell on your muscles.
• Anyway, we made it. Yaaay!
• After stopping at a road house for lunch. Which is where I ordered a salad. A big green salad with plump red tomatoes, white balls of cheese, and a big gray hairy thing that I thought was a portabello.
• Turns out the gray thing was an anchovy. I almost threw up.
• After driving past fields of corn, grapes, and dead sunflowers, Kate told us about the history of Rome, Romulus and Ramus, and the Roman Empire.
• Also, she played the scene from Holy Grail where they talk about what the emipre ever did for them.
• Never mind. You had to be there.

  

• So we took a train into Rome and saw the Colloseum, the Pantheon, the Senate, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Kate said she could be arrested for acting as a tour guide -- quite a serious offense in Roma due to all the underemployment.We had to disperse once when we saw a cop come over.
• Had dinner at a pizza parlour in the middle of Rome, where we were pretty much ignored until we started flagging them down for Everything. We. Wanted. To. Order. My pizza had garlic and capers on top. Then for dessert -- pistacio gelato. So very nice.
• Dear god these Italians have smutty TV commercials. I'm watching a woman grab her ass as she lustily stares at a piece of chocolate cake.
• There are like 4 single single guys on our tour, and 15 single women. It's funny to watch the women all fawn over the guys.

A full day in Roma