July 24th 2007 - Dinner and a Coloseaum, all in dirty clothes

1:00 am (late Tuesday night) – my trip

So we just got done eating with Grace. Its been an exhausting day. I am about as tired as I have been in as long as I can remember.

We started off the day a little earlier than yesterday, we left the house at 8:45. That put us in Rome about 10am. We walk out of the subway station and BAM! There is the coliseum. Its so big. Its prettier than in all the pictures.

However, the line was ridiculously long so we pulled out our trusty guidebook, which had just cooked us breakfast and washed our clothes all by itself, and it told us to take a right and get tickets up the hill as both tickets cover the same thing.

We did.

We returned.

We skipped the 2 hour line.

YAH! Go Rick Steves for time saving tips! However, the unfortunate part for me was when Bwige said that Rick Steves was her man. Sad day.

When we got inside, we rented these little radios where you can punch in a number and it will tell you about what you are looking at. Well the guidebook said to bring your own 2 pair of headphones and a splitter so you can save money on them. It worked well (after exchanging the first pair). It was fun, because we had to be close because of the range of the wires, so we walked all through the coliseum, arm in arm, smiling our big goofy ‘We’re in love, get over it’ smile. Lots of fun.

OK, the Romans were nuts. Like, ‘I’m rich and I can do whatever crazy thing I want’ nuts. Actually, they were, ‘I have lots of slaves and I can do any crazy thing I want’ nuts.

It took 40,000 slaves to built this monstrosity, which was actually originally called the Falvian Theater, and a solid half of them died in the building. Talk about disposable resources!!! At one point, they wanted to commemorate a whale washing up on the beach, so they built a whale on the inside of the theater. Sometimes they would have naval battles on in the theater. YES!! Full naval battles with big ships. Which meant they had to flood the center after waterproofing the floor. Just wow.

I cant wait for the panoramic to turn out from this place.

Next we went and got very frustrated with the internet. We tried to look up our baggage information on delta’s website and they just didn’t have it in the system. Arg.. We also tried calling a few places and it didn’t seem to work. The Italian phone systems are proving to be very frustrating.

After that didn’t work, We decided to find a hotel to help us to call because none of the phones we were trying were working. We would try and call and it would give us funky Italian messages that were too complex for Bwige’s basic language skills. This wonderful hotel called the Delta office in Rome for us which transferred us to the baggage center in the US. The guy on the phone gave us good news! Our bags were still in New York! On top of that, they didn’t know exactly where in New York they were so he had us describe the contents and what it looked like and stuff… on top of that, and remember we are on an international call on the hotel’s tab, his computer dies and we sit there for over 10 minutes waiting for him to restart it. Finally, we don’t want to overstay our welcome at the hotel so we tell him we need to go. He takes another 10 minutes to find the number for the Rome airport for us. The 2^nd worst custom service I have ever dealt with.

Fantastic, now, after 3 days in Rome, when our bags were supposed to be delivered yesterday, they have lost them. We go outside and I hold Brigette as she breaks down into tears from frustration. Any company/person that makes my wife cry is blacklisted. Delta was not on our good list before, now they have dug themselves deeper.

After calming her down and getting her some yummy coconut gelato, we decided to spend the rest of the day on palatine hill. It was beautiful! Basically, palatine hill is made up of the ruins of the palaces of past emperors. Nice gardens, beautiful houses, one emperors private chariot racing stadium… yah. We got some good picture there.

Next, we went to the forum, which is where the senators used to walk around. I don’t know much more about it, but it was nice. However, all the walking was killing our feet. Between the hiking around all day long and the 20 pound pack, I was having trouble walking. However, that didn’t stop the day from being over.

Still in wearing the same pair of clothes from Saturday, we searched around for shop to buy something new. Unfortunately, things were closing around then, so I ran down about 15 blocks quickly looking for a place to buy some underwear. I found several. Unfortunately, because they were shops in the nice part of town, they wanted about $35+ for a pair. I can go one more day with old undies for that price! Anyways… my feel were about falling off. I was limping all the way back to Bwige, who I had left at a girl clothes shop to buy herself some stuff. The only time my feet have ever hurt that much was when I was in philmont. The last day we were coming back and it was a long hike down the mountain and I ended up with a blister literally 2 inches long on my foot. Unable to make it home, I practically collapsed on the Spanish steps and we sat for about 15 minutes and ate some bread we had bought earlier in the day (enough to hold us till dinner).

When we finally got back to Cesano, our wonderful host Grace had made us dinner! And how tasty it was! The first course was spaghetti with bell peppers in it. YUMMY. Even better was the eggplant parmesan with the next course. Wow, it’s the best I’ve ever had. As for the wine… well… Bwige liked it, but I’m still learning. I drank what was put in front of me and water after that. Grace was such a wonderful host I didn’t want to say anything bad about her expensive wine and offend her. I’ll learn to like wine eventually…

We talked about a lot of different things. It was fun because she speaks pretty good English, but her husband Marco doesn’t. So I can use my elementary knowledge of Spanish to talk to him and since the language is close, eh can understand enough of what I said. Bwige did much better at talking to both of them. We discussed how the big stores were coming in and killing all the mom and pop stores. I didn’t know they had that problem here also.

We also talked about the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. I was saying how in Catholicism, you are saved by the sacraments as opposed to by faith. I talked about how that we believe that good works don’t save you, but simply show that you are saved. Just as me loving my wife does not make me married to her, but shows that I am married to her. Then, because it was almost midnight, Marco said that we should change the subject because it was too late to be discussing deep things. I laughed and said I was a night owl so my brain was just now waking up. I hope the conversation went well…

Well… time for bed… laterz.