23 août 2009

It’s a total understatement to say Rome is hot. It’s scorching. Leah and I changed locales this morning – to the Pop Inn Hostel. We rode the metro to the Colosseum with the intention of renting two bikes to explore the city on all day. Instead, we rented the coolest thing – a two-seater bike where you sit on a bench side-by-side instead of one behind the other. It was great! I know we provided some entertainment for passerbys, especially as we struggled to get up Rome’s hills. Three nuns stopped to take pictures of us as we were huffing and puffing! We rode all over Southern Rome – Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Piazza Venezia, Ponte Garibaldi, Ponte Fabricio, and my favorite building in all of Rome, the Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II!. On the bike ride, we stopped by one of Rome’s oldest theaters, Teatro de Marcello, to see about opera tickets. We asked a waiter in the corner café for directions and had no idea it would help us out so much the next day. We picked up sliced watermelon and headed back to the hostel to get out of the heat for a little while and get ready for the night. We ate at a chic restaurant decorated with Japanese latterns and twinkle lights and had a wonderful, long dinner with plenty of bruschetta, pasta, pizza, wine, and limoncello shots. We were able to see the Trevi Fountain a little later in the evening and made our wishes. Right hand over left shoulder or your wishes won’t come true.