Friday, June 11, 2010

When In Rome (Yeah yeah I know)

So, we're terrible bloggers, but we've been busy getting sunburnt and seaweeded and sleeping on various modes of transport and basically just not blogging.
At the moment, we're in a dorm in the middle of Rome with 2 girls from Taiwan who probably speak better English than I normally do, one of whom has had her passport stolen today (she was freaking out, badly). We just got home from a delicious dinner, which although was the most expensive we've had in Europe, was totally worth it!
Yesterday we had a nice morning of chatting on Skype to smother, da and Denice and Simon, then ran off to join the hoards at Pompeii (NB: Not actual hoards.)
Pompeii is pretty amazing. It's still very intact, and the audio tour taught us a bunch about the Pompeian lifestyle. We got to visit a brothel, several houses, some temples and the amphitheatre. And we found out that we suck at following the map we were given. We tried really hard to follow the itinerary for the 4 hour audio tour, got lost on the 3rd stop, and just made it up as we wnt from there...still, we had fun, got very dusty and sweaty and tired from walking forever, and learned a bunch. Chris now wants us to live in a Roman-style house, with an atrium and garden included...
Our day today involved battling the Italian post system for most of the morning. Seriously, England hasn't got beaurocracy as bad as PostItaliane do. I filled out 4 forms, had my passport photocopied, and had to wait an hour while they fixed the door of the post office. About 2 and a half hours later (considerable expense and lighter packs evened each other out, in my opinion) we were ready to leave Sorrento for Rome! While Sorrento was beautiful, it was also very touristy and well-travelled, but I suppose it's hard to be a beautiful town and not get overrun by tourists in Europe. In Australia it's hard just to be a beautiful town... =P
We arrived in Rome about 3 hours after leaving Sorrento, which isn't too bad at all, really. We purchased a couple of Roma Passes, which get us into 2 archaeological sites or museums for free, and get us discounts for all the others, free public transport for 3 days, and 20% discount on segway hire (!!!) among other things. Tomorrow I think we'll hit up the Colosseum, Palatine and Roman Forum, which only counts as one site, so I don't know yet what we'll spend our other free visit on... I really want to visit the catacombs as well, which unfortunately aren't covered by the pass, but whatever, we'll still go.
I don't want to try to catch up on all the in-between since we last posted right now, because it's been a long day, and we're getting up early tomorrow, so for now, that's all folks!