Hey Hef, the Pope called, he wants his robe back!

So after repeated email attempts, oh lets say about 20 in Rome alone, to find a joint to stay at, Colette and I settled on a hostel. We cruised down on a low speed rail from Annecy, France to Roma, Italia. We rented a sleeper cabin the night before on the train ride down. It slept 4 so technically we rented half of it while this old English guy rented one of the remaining fourths. He spotted my Zeppelin shirt and claimed to own a small recording studio outside of London that Robert Plant frequents. I questioned his veracity and he provided several facts about Robert that only a hardcore fan, groupie, or a stalker would know. I've never seen the band live myself but restraining order document suggest I reside in the latter of the aforementioned categories. After a hour talk about all things Zeppelin, we got some shut eye. We arrived at about 8 a.m. in Rome.

After we arrived, we dropped off our bags and commenced to sight seeing.


Oh the Colosseum in all of her ageless glory. Another € 13 (19 US dollars). I swear every time I turn around its € 13. I don't know if I mentioned previously but I had to pay € .75 to take a piss! How could something so natural cost money? They really get you both ways. They charge you money for water (natural), then they charge you to take a piss (also natural). Jokes on them though as I have peed on several buildings around the European Union free of charge!

This is now my defacto pose every time Colette makes me jump in a picture against my will.

Rome, Italy

Vatican City

This is the Vatican's version of Macy's Dept. store. You have to walk past these bastards to get to the Museums entrance. You can get anything you need here. Knock off Prada and Gucci bags for €10. Anything from belt buckles to sun glasses pretty much a Euro a dozen. The best part is the cops come up to them and put on their lights and the vendors scatter. As soon as the cops drive past, they set up shop again. It's a flea market Pakistani style!

I was too hungry to raise my finger in disapproval for this picture.

Some museum in Rome

This is the view from outside the hostel. It's kind of off putting for sure but I didn't see anything that said "kill whitey!" so I felt somewhat safe.

This was the inside of our hostel. It was quite sizable and set us back only € 45 (65 US dollars). The only catch was we had to share the bathroom with the floor but the bathrooms were very clean.

I have become quite enamoured with these little bastards. It is a Fiat 500. I am not sure of the HP specs but the engine itself weighs in at a beefy .5 Liter!

Ok, the guy below deserves his own blog post. So we are walking down the street and we see this dude rifling through his bag for something. The only thing different about this guy was his pants were halfway down his ass. We thought it may have been an innocent mistake. I know I have been on the embarrassing end of this a few times in my day. So we stuck around to watch other passer byers take in this ridiculous sight. For some odd reason, few people were as amused as we were by his ass and this sight alone induced painful throat laughter. Anyways, Colette and I crossed the street and looped back around to find him walking away from us, sure enough, pants still half way down his ass. Only this time he almost looked to be performing a ham string stretch. It possibly more mimicked the time wasting maneuver you have pulled off during running days in P.E. You know, your tired but you don't want your friend to think you are a bitch and your P.E teacher to say anything so you kneel down and pretend to tie your shoe? Yeah, we've all done it at least 10 times although I have probably seen it executed nearly a 1,000 times in the field. Well, here is this guy, middle of Rome, midday, amidst many a pedestrian.

So I am a couple of days behind on the blog. All is well. We are in Florence for the evening. We leaving on a midnight train to ..... Vienna, tommorrow.