Day 4: July 19 - Rome

Day 4: July 19, 2010
Time: 5:06pm (Rome Time)
Today we had a more relaxing morning. We woke up and were out the house by 9am. We took the bus to the metro, and then took the orange metro to the blue metro. We walked around Northern Rome, to the Centre Park Lookout. From the top you could see St. Peter's Basillica, and the walls around the Vatican. Below was a large open plaza, so we walked down to it and saw the fountains and Egyptian hieroglyphics. We climbed the sphinx and took pictures.
From there we went back to the Termini metro and were on it until we reached the Colloseo stop. As we walked outside, we saw it. HUGE. The famous Roman Collusseam. We walked around it and admired it. We didn't go inside because we are doing it in our tour tomorrow.
Every one of us was getting hungry so we tried to find a nice place to eat. We went into a pharmacy to get some bandaids, and asked for s nice restaurant that was close. Turns out the woman working there had connections with this quaint restaurant and could get us 10% off. We went with that and started walking. It took us a bus or two to arrive in the general location, and walked into the small side streets. We couldn't find this place anywhere, we asked for directions twice, and finally we found it. Taverna Della Scala. We sat down and ordered drinks. How good it felt to have fresh, cold water. I ordered spaghetti bolognaise to share with Rochelle, Gillie shared the 4 course meal with dad, Alannah had plain pasta with cheese, and mom had a seafood pasta dish (with a real size prawn in it!) Mamma Mia! The 3 young ones got super hyper over this funny video of Alannah saying "GASP" really funnily. Walking back, Gilie kept getting distracted by postcards.
We took the bus, and boy was it full! I was pushed up against many people (including this unattractive, short, fake, blonde guy who kept looking at his phone which had a picture of himself trying to model on the home page - disturbing...) and then the metro back to our first bus stop. We walked up a hill to the bus stop, tired and sweaty :S and waited for the bus for about 20-25 minutes. Longest wait ever - especially in that heat! Dad went to the bank, and met us back home. We all showered and now feel refreshed. :)l
Time: 11:26pm
We had a very quiet night tonight. Us girls were tired, so we decided that mom and dad should go out for dinner together. We stayed home and watched Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. We didn't really have any dinner, sp we improvised. We ate chocolate cereal, apple, peanuts, and ritz crackers. We cleaned up and finished the movie. I feel relaxed and ready for our day- tour tomorrow. I'll write tomorrow! xxxm