Another day, another pizza...

I'm ridiculously tired right now, for no reason in particular.  I'm sick of the road, but I'm also not ready to go home.  Unfortunately, it seems as though I'll be getting home either this coming Monday or this Friday, depending on accommodations in the last city we would like to see.  Either way, we're flying into London the day after tomorrow.  From there, we may or may not be traveling further.  It'll be nice to do laundry in a space that's not a sink, but I feel as though I did London while I was staying with Gill.  Of course, it's impossible to see an entire city in a day, but I've been to London before.  There isn't all that much to do, I don't think.

Today, we woke up late.  Gill finally shook me awake at 9:30, which left us thirty minutes to change and get to breakfast before they stopped serving it at 10:00.  Simone (the friendly hotel worker) opened the breakfast room for us again, and we had the run of the place.  This hotel is seriously abandoned, but that makes it all the nicer.  We also saw bits and pieces of MTV in Italian, as well as the new series of YuGi-Oh with fabulous dubbing, and a commercial with George Clooney speaking Italian.  And here I thought he couldn't get any sexier.

We then went back to our room and proceeded to upload the huge mass of photos we took yesterday, and I finished my blog post from this morning because pic upload was taking forever.  Between uploads, I would read passages of Dharma Bums, which I am literally about ten pages away from the end of.  I don't want to finish it yet, but it's almost there, and I have another book I can get into by the time we get to London.  I read too much, but what can you do?  I've already finished Wiseguys, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Eyre Affair, 127 hours between a rock and a hard place, and now almost all of Dharma Bums this month alone, between traveling and sightseeing and late nights and early mornings.  I'm fairly impressed with myself.  Anyway, we took a break in the middle of the marathon upload to go outside and sit in the sun for a little bit.

The weather this morning was absolutely beautiful; sunny, with limited cloud cover, and a cool breeze.  We sat outside and soaked up the sun when one of the friendly neighborhood kitties crossed our path.  I call him Giovanni, just because.  He's a skinny black cat with big green eyes, and his coat shines red in the sunlight.  We called him over, and he stayed some time with us, purring, marking us, and allowing us to pet him.  In fact, he butted his head into our hands more often than not, and spent some time in each of our laps.  Then, he decided it was time to get back to normal kitty things, and he ran off to laze in the sun, watching us walk back to our room with the air of an appeased monarch. 

Back in the room, we finally ran out of toilet paper, and decided it was about time to go outside, pictures be damned!  So we suited up, donned our scarves, and sat in the sun to wait for the bus.  In the meantime, a family had met up in the main square of the town near the restaurant, and were all speaking about something in animated Italian.  There were two little girls with them, dressed up in their Sunday best, and I surmised that a sort of birthday party was happening.  The bus was forever in coming, but it finally arrived, and we had a female driver, which is new.  The ride down wasn't as terrifying as it could have been, but we were also on the lookout for a local copy point where we could print our ticket vouchers for the flight to London on Monday.  We arrived at the main train station without having seen the building, and got onto the train in the direction of St. Peter's.

There are a lot of nuns in the area of Rome.  Like, a huge amount.  I don't think I've ever seen as many nuns in my life as I've seen in our two days here.  They're everywhere, with their adorable habits, and cute little hats, and wimples!  I want to take one home as a pet, but I don't think the Roman Catholic Church would approve of my chloroforming one of the sisters and stuffing her in my backpack under any circumstances.  Alas.

When we got to St. Peter's, we took approximately the same path we'd taken yesterday through the city, because we were going in the direction of the Spanish Steps, and the fashion district, which are slightly beyond the area where we stopped walking yesterday.  I didn't take many pictures at all today, because it was all the same stuff, but here are some pictures I didn't fit in this morning's post for one reason or another:

John Paul II stares benignly out at you from random buildings in this city

The churches really pop out from the residential housing because of the latter's plainness

I also really really liked this graffiti :-)

By the time we got through town, we were both feeling a little hungry, so we looked out for a relatively cheap cafe where we could sit and eat.  Neither of us brought any water today, so it was doubly important to find somewhere to eat, because we could order a giant litre bottle of water and drink it all up.  We finally found a place, and sat down.  The service was the worst I've ever experienced in my life.  The waiters couldn't give a shit less about us, we were barely acknowledged, and had to wait a long time to get the check, even after we'd asked the attendant for it.  Ugh.  We also got a seat next to the giant display of artichokes, so the bugs were a bit of an annoyance.  I had a strange pizza that sounded good.  When they brought it out, it literally had everything I would ever want to try in Italy on it.  Gillian had the spaghetti bolognese.

Pizza the size of my face, with an attractive backdrop of artichokes

Yeah, that's half a hard-boiled, baked egg

I never would've thought of combining all the different ingredients on my pizza, but they blended together well, and the crust was thin and flaky.  It wasn't as good as yesterday's, but it was nice, and I didn't look up until I'd eaten a good 3/4 of this entire pie.  It was delicious.  Then, we flagged down the surly waiter, got out check, paid, and walked in the direction of the Spanish Steps.  I'd bought a few souvenirs along the way, and then we were there.

I didn't take pictures, because the crowds were absolutely out of control, and the stores were all haute couture.  I mean, they probably wouldn't have let us in, looking like consummate travelers as we did.  The line to Chanel was around the block.  I saw a lot of floral prints on shoes, and some interesting work with ruffles, but Gill and I talked about how strange it is that some people center their entire lives around fashion, and what random people (read: designers) decide that the masses should wear.  We saw the panicked scatter of the hawkers of off-brand goods (knock-off handbags, mostly) for no visible reason.  I assume the police must've gotten too close for comfort, but there's no way of knowing.  We also popped into a bookshop (finally!) and looked around for a while, but didn't get anything, because I'm now carrying four books in my backpack, and they all take up extra, mostly-useless weight.

We saw the Spanish Steps, which were crowded with huge masses of tourists, looking down on the fashion district.  We also climbed all 125 or so of the steps, looked down, and climbed all the way back down.  It wasn't amazingly exciting, but it was nice to have done all the mostly-touristy things there are to do in Rome in two days.  Getting out of the fashion district was challenging, since it seems like every single person in all of Rome was trying to get onto the street we were attempting to leave at the same time.  Gill and I held hands and did it like you do in concerts: create a pathway, and bust our way through it.

When we were clear of the large crowd, we got some gelato, and ate it on the way back to St. Peter's, and the train station.  Gill was the victim of an attempted pickpocketing, which we were soo prepared for.  We laughed about it as we crossed the bridge and walked back through The Vatican.  It was sunset, so the light was very pretty, and there was a significantly smaller amount of people.  Hawkers on the side of the road were already putting out palm-themed goods for sale tomorrow.  I can't believe I'm going to be in Rome on Palm Sunday.  There's no way in hell I'm getting within a mile of the actual city on that kind of holiday, but it's cool that I'm so close. 

We took the train back, and then the bus, and collapsed in the hotel room, killing time until we can go to sleep.  I don't know why I'm so tired today, but it's there, and there's not much I can do about it.  It's now 10:30, and my songs on grooveshark have almost all expired, so it's time to turn in.  Good night!