hello
so I guess it's like 5am there, sorry we weren't able to post last night...some girls are trying to go to Poland, couldn't make the computer work for them, started crying (WE HAVE TO SLEEP OR WE'LL BE MISERABLE TOMORROW). I guess someone neglected to tell them that they are still in Europe and it's awesome. anyway, they took forever and our nerves couldn't take the drama. So, we've just woken up from our last night in Rome, and let me tell you, it followed a pretty amazing day. We woke up to our usual nutella and buttered toast--not the healthiest meal, but definitely enough calories to last until dinner, which is usually necessary. After eating, I finished Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels (great but sad), while Molly primped, coiffed, curled, touched up, and beautified herself. Haha she'll kill me if she sees that. So we left our hostel without much of a plan, only to see a few things we'd neglected previously. First we headed for the Pope's botanical garden and ended up walking for about an hour down a busy street. I'm still not sure if the Pope actually has a botanical garden or not, but we eventually found a pretty bench overlooking most of the vatican, where we refueled with some apples we'd picked up along the way (doused in nutella of course). From the bench, we made our way over the river and headed for the pantheon. Since the ancient temple is a bit of a walk from the other side of the river, we had the chance to get a little insight into Roman culture...we just about became Vespa roadkill a few times, we saw millions of old men with half sipped espresso and half smoked cigarettes lounging outside the many cafes, and of course we got stuck behind countless nuns and similar old ladies who simply had to scuttle through the narrow streets side by side with arms locked (basically a living road block). we arrived at the Pantheon around 1 oclock. from the outside, we were able to take pictures and enjoy the ancient building constructed by Hadrian when it was still illegal to be a Christian! As we ventured inside, we saw the amazing and ornate decorations, but also something I found pretty cool--Raphael's tomb, one of the stops in the new Tom Hanks movie Angels and Demons. From the Pantheon, we made our way to another of Tom Hanks' stops, a statue called the Ecstacy of St. Therese. Her story goes like this...nevermind, unsutable for our blog, look it up on wikipedia. Basically, she found God irresistable. I've learned about that statue in just about every humanities class I've ever had so the experience was pretty neat. From there, we decided to go see a movie and went to try and find one in English. We were in luck! In Republic square we found a theater showing Terminator Salvation in its original version (with Italian subtitles), but since it wasn't until 655, we had some time to kill. We searched fruitlessly for a Pizza place (they all took siesta from 3-530), but finally found one that was willing to serve us. Although we were too cheap to buy bottled water (we sat our nalgenes right on the table), the pizza was reasonably filling and good. From there, the adventure really began. We had heard about this ice cream, about 2 miles away, that is supposedly every chocolate and ice cream expert's dream come true, so of course we wanted to try it. We had exactly an hour before our movie, so we basically ran across Rome for what turned out to be a little mud-pie looking chocolate pile on some tin foil. We weren't exactly imitating St. Therese, but it was good. We raced back to Republic square, saw our movie (great action!), and came out to find Rome all lit up, once again. Our walk home was uneventful, until we got back to our hostel and I talked molly into getting more of our favorite gelato. I'm laughing right now to remember that although we'd already had gelato once yesterday, we went and stood in a 30 person line for more, but its true and it was worth it. We walked back, slowly licking, and soon found ourselves waiting on the Poland girls. Hope that mad rush of a day wasn't too confusing. oh yeah, we have this cool room mate from Quebec, who we originally didn't like, but now we do. We all introduced ourselves last night, and she's one of those cool Canadians who speaks French, so it was very fun when she would say...''how you say...?'' when trying to explain something. We originally didn't like her, as I mentioned, because we thought she had been moving our stuff everyday but as it turns out, that was the maid. We love you guys...have a good day....we're going to Florence...we love Rome...bye
Ben&Molly
Quote for the day
Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind. ~Seneca
