gladiator beers...

with pictures...movies too!

nuff, freaking, said

Mk, so first and foremost....i have GOT to know whos reading this sctuff, pa pa pa please leave a comment i really wanna know....not have to, just wanna!

anyway, so i just got back from rome yesterday. and it twas, a.maze.ing. Heres to the colosium, to rodrigo, to the trevi fountain, to the pantheon, to rick steves, to the vatican, to mike our tour guide from ohio, to the heat, to yotels, to the spanish steps. to the sistene chapel, to michaelagelo and his ways, to the roman forum, a.plus federal credit union...to gellappo (spell check?), to the crazy italians, to 'asi asi!!'. to my cell phone dying, to gladiator beers by the colosium, to the freaking colosium, to my hat smothered in colosium dirt...to freaking ROME!!!!

so thats my toast to rome, it was absolutly amazing. well ok, so story time...friday we get to rome around 11 and we make our way out of the airport to meet up with something called the teravision. what it is, is an 8 euro ride from the airport to the termini. it was a charter bus, without a.c full of smelly people. it was really nice though to get a ride, rather than catching a cab. thank god for rick steves. he told me about this thing we take...we get to the termini where all of our hostels are very close to.

me and my buddy trey got to our hotel that we booked a few days before (bahah)...it was called the hotel des artestis. well, we get there, pay our dues or whatever, it was around noon or so, and they tell us we cant check in til 3. lame. we've got everything we brought and no where to put it...trey and i being guys only brought a back pack so it wasnt a big deal for us to just carry it around...well trey had been in rome the previous day, so he knew exactly where our hotel was and everything which was really nice

...cause i SUCK at directions

anyway...so trey and i find something to eat and go back to our hotel to check in. they take our 65 pounds each and send us to a different hotel down the street. they gave us a map and ONE key, which made everything really easy. so trey and i finally find it, and we notice theres a very prestigious builiding connected to our place...we also see a whole bunch of guys walking around with ak-47's and really mean demeanors....we stayed at the russian embassy. the building we were staying at was actually connected to the embassey and had about 100 guards all around, bullet proof shutters, hardcore security. it was awesome. i felt secure...

anyway, so trey and i drop our crap off and i meet up with lizdizzly, emily and mallORI. we go strait for the collosium. its down a road called via cavor, which is pretty much I-35 in texas, its the road to everything. its really nice cause rome wasnt that drawn out, you could walk alot of the places we wanted to see. well, we're walking, walking...they're following and i'm wondering if ive even got the right road to follow....well, i do have the right road....how do i know??

thats why, we walked around the corner and theres the freaking colosium. the place where sports originated. where maximus did his thing. the one reason i wanted to go to rome.

it was absoutly amazing...

so, everyone kinda gets over their starstrucked-ness of the colosium and we find some gelappo. which is italian ice cream....three or four times the sugar as american ice cream....amaaaaazing. kicking back next to the colosium eating our ice cream...gooooooood times. so after we killed our ice cream the girls wanted to go shopping or something

...i honestly had a hard time listening, i was standing next to the colosium...

but they went to go shop and i wanted to go inside the colosium, but there was a huge line to get tickets. but my good friend rick steves (the guy who wrote my guide book, the back door to europe) told me to go to the rarly crowded arch of titus ticket line to get my roman forum, colosium and titus ticket. after dropping 11 euro on that ticket i hustled over to the entrance and saw a street artist on my way. so i stopped, haggled, ended up paying 18 euro for a 20 euro paiting he was selling. good deal huh, haha. anyway, so get up to the entrance and bypass all the thousands of people, a good 100 yard line, and go strait for the entrance with my ticket. swipe it through and...there...it....is

i've been in many stadiums, on many fields that mean lots to me. from cameron's floor, to playing on the same floor michael did, to standing in the same spot where emmitt broke the rushing record, to walking into fenway the same spot papi hit that game winner, to the same spot that the spurs won many of times...this one started...everything that are those memories...

ok, so best way to describe it is if you've ever been to the texas rangers stadium in arlington. i mean that in a very...figurative? way?...i dont know i cant think of the word, but the stadium in arlington kinda has the gates that line the outside and youre under the actual stadium...well same at the colosium. all the arches face outside and theres only 2 entrances into the colosium its self. well...

...as an avid red sox fan i got the same feeling when i walked into fenway that i did when i went through the tunnel that i did when i went through the tunnel and saw the inside of the freaking colosium.

i dont wanna say that it was emotional, as i cant describe how i felt. just amazing to be looking at the place...


i took about 1000000000 pictures, many will be on the photobucket site...

anyway, so most of the place was closed for some reason. but i got to walk around the entire bottom and 2nd floors. i was running around like a little kid. it was by far the coolest thing (tied with fenway, cameron) that ive ever seen. you can really tell where the people came into watch the specticals...where the animals were kept, where the gladiators entered from, where the emperor sat. i probably spent 2 hours just running around...

it was so, so, so cool. anyway, so after that i ended up meeting up with trey. before i met him at our hotel, i had to run to an atm. right before i left the hotel i had decided to take my money belt and strap it around my belt, like stevo told me....it was a last second decision...

...then it happened.

i went to grab my card out of my belt, and...its...gone. i had put it in the securist spot i had on the belt itself. in the zipper part. but as i was running around the colosium i had apparently lost it. lamers. well, i immediatly called my bank to find out that theyre closed. awesome. no 24 hours, 'hey i lost my debit card in a foreign country' lines. it was ok because i got ahold of the bank about 15 minutes after i had lost it, and everything got cancelled.

financially speaking i was still more than ok, i had a gift card with about 270 bucks. well we have this whole thing called the exchange rate. i can exchange 300 american dollars and get 140 english pounds. 200 dollars and get 125 european euros. lame eh? yeah, but i was not freaking out cause i had my card, i had 300 bucks in travelers cheques back at lan franc, so everything was ok.

or so i thought...

apparently the roman culture is anti-cards. seriously i had a HARD time trying to find a place that accepted cards. the gift card i had was a visa, so i could use it anywhere i could use a visa right? well, it didnt work for atm's. which...sucked

thank god for trey though, he stepped up, covered me with things that i had to pay for cash with. and i would try to pay for his food, or our gladiator beers. so, anyway, finacially i am all good so no need to worry mamma. ya know, if ya wanna send me a couple bucks, thatd be fine...i mean...it be great...haha

k, that was on one of the walls of the colosium...little..ugh, A&M, yep JR said it, meant it

aaaaaaaaanyway, so after i cancelled my debit card, trey and i dropped off our crap at the hotel...and hit a restraunt right down the corner and had italian espresso. which, as a coffee snob i wasnt impressed. it was very, very robust. almost tasted burnt. i'm more of a fan of the strait coffee more than espresso. and i love english espresso. very smooth, but very strong. still good.

anyway, so left the espresso place and hit a place that had 1 liter beers. they were huge and expensive, but as the cliche goes...'when in rome'. i tried to make it through this whole blog with out dropping that, but, it fits so well. anyway, so i finished my ONE beer and went back to the hotel. ;)

saturday we woke up at around 10, when we were supposed to wake up at 7...but bullet proof shutters really keep the sun out! so trey and i were kinda peturbed that we woke up so late, as the vatican closes at 145. so we grabbed some breakfast and met up with david, another friend of ours. and we were off to the vatican.

it was freaking amazing to be standing inside all the coloumns. seriously amazing. if you ever get a chance, seriously....go. it was only sundays and wednesdays that the pope would be near the vatican, which sucked but oh well. well the line was wrapped around most of the interior of the vatty. so i was talking to the guys about getting a tour guide. we were approached by an austrailian guy selling tours for 40 euros, but...that...is WAY too much. so we find a few other people for around 28, 26.

well, then it happened again...goes like this

canadian tour guide: hey guys, would you like a tour?
americans: how much?
canadian: 26?
me: oh well that guy just offered us a tour for 20
canadian: hmmmm
david: no dude it was 28
me: ugh
canadian: hmm...ugh
me: damnit david
david: ....oh

haha, funny times. anyway, so we get a tour with a guy from ohio named mike. he married an italian chick when he was in iraq, got out of the army and she wanted to finish school. so he's like, hell we'll just stay here that way we dont have wicked tuition fees in the states. learned all about the vatican and ended up giving un-offical tours for cheaper than the offical ones. which just means he's not legal cause he hasnt taken the test, but he's legit. i think, i dunno he could have been bsing, and i would have believed him. ohhh, that block was held by the pope, cool!

anyway, the good thing about the tour was that we got to we got to bypass the huge line going in. longer than the colosium. it was really nice just to get into the vatican without a line. well, we went through and the video below is of a Jesus, and when raphel (not the turtle) painted it he made it into an illusion so Christ's eyes actually follow you...see if you can tell, its amazing.

see it?

we went all around the museum which was actually holding the sistene chapel inside the museum, so there were many things that i had to take a picture of. check them out on the photobucket site, many o pics. but, seriously the vatican was amazing. we walked through hearing all the stories about everything...it was awesome. we saw the sistene chapel, and all the gorgeous paiting above, it was...wow. the best part i'd have to say was when we went into the tomb areas. where many of the popes are buried. and we were walking around we saw, Pope John the 10000th.

...then i saw him

i was walking around and i came to this gorgeous tomb. i couldnt take pics, otherwise i would have, but it was guarded by a vatican police officer, and it was a room that went back into the wall about a good 20 feet. glass was at the front, think of a hallway i guess is the best way to describe it. there was a window infront of a hallway, and the tomb was in the back. well, the floors were all marble, with gold all over them. the tomb itself was about 10 feet tall, and had a coffin made out of sheer gold. it was St. Peter's tomb. i was really amazed by it, i had no idea he was buried there, and it was...again...wow


anyway, so we left the vatican and our guide mike gave us a great place to eat where we slammed a few pizzas and headed for the night walk through rome. it wasnt as much of a night walk, as much of a afternoon 'holy crap its hot' walk. we mapped it out on a map that rick steves gave us. many o pictures on the photobucket site.

we started at the vatican and walked through rome to the pantheon, to the fountain to the spanish steps. stopped off and grabbed some frozen espresso, with ice cream and whipped cream.

...woah, amazing. seattles best will probably have a new drink.

anyway, so after our 3 mile walk, trey and i ended up at the same colosium (i'm too lazy to use spell check so im gonna spell colososim different ways everytime...) trey and i ended up at the same place we were the night before, [ ;) ] had one more gladiator beer, got the glass from our good friend Rodrigo ( a waiter there ) tipped him well and headed back to the hotel...boo. Seriously nothing like having a beer 50 yards away from the colosium.

...good guy

we got back to the hotel a little peturbed that we were leaving the next day, but stoked about having a shower (seperate) with water pressure. the showers at lan franc are la-hhaaa-ame.

so i passed out as soon as i hit that bed, it was awesome. they were temper pedic, so, amazing. anyway, so the next morning i had set my alarm for 7 as we had to be at the termini (where we catch the bus). well, apparently my phone didnt cooperate with the time change (somehow i didnt notice) and it went off an hour late. thank GOD for liz texting me asking me where i was. so it took trey and i literally 5 minutes to get packed, and we ran to the original hotel to check out, dropped off our key and sprinted to the termini where we got on the bus and headed back to the airport. the flights were pretty easy, just 2 hours long...

we flew in and out of london's gatwick airport, which is about a hour ride by train to cant.terbury's east station. and about an hour and a half, to two hour ride to cant.terbury's west station. we ended up having to take the longer train, which was freaking brutal after a long plane ride. but, whatever we finally got back to cant.terbury and it was nice to be back.

i ended up at the penny that night, told some roman stories, and went to bed. so, that was rome, pretty amazing. please go, its so awesome. but, anyway, im in the computing lab finishing up this blog then i must write some journals for persuasion class. but, yeah have a great day today as its like 7 am there and almost 3 p.m here. i'm gonna grab some food and bust out some school sctuff.
its a little werid being back cause everyone here speaks ENGLISH! so, talking to stangers i dont have to ask if they do speak my language. its pretty much known.

only 8 more days in cant.terbury which i dont wanna think about, cause i love it so much here. anyway, enjoy the heat and i shall blog it up later. ok for some retarted reason i cant upload pictures onto photobucket. UGH! I MISS MY MAC!

Last video is of me picking up some dirt at the colosium...remind you of any movies???