My travels so far...

 DAY 1 29th of August

Well,  the flight went okay. I got selected for the random bomb search and frisked, AGAIN!!! It was a VERY long flight!!!!! and they just seemed to keep feeding us and feeding us. It was quite funny actually and the food was rather good. We've arrived safely in Tokyo *whheeeeeee*!

The first thought mum and I had was to go and have some real Sushi in Japan. Well, wasn't THAT a rather spectacular disaster!! We asked the lady "Is this stuff raw? We don't want raw stuff" and she said that there was only one raw thing in the dish we wanted to order. Turns out there was one COOKED peice in the dish and the rest of it was raw *shudder*. I choked down some of it, but just couldn't eat it all.... and poor mum! To top it off all of it had been liberally slathered in Wasabi. I think my head took off to the moon at one point. That stuff was HOTHOTHOT!!! It ended up being a VERY expensive meal that neither of us enjoyed at all.

After that we went to the nearest vending machine and got ourselves some juice (I do believe that I am going to fall in love with those vending machines. Really, I do!). Then we went downstairs and got a calling card to let dad know that we'd got to Japan safely. I spotted what looked like a seven 11 clone across the street so I dragged mum over there to get something that wasn't raw to eat.

I think I impressed the older serving lady, I was able to ask her what stuff was and order my Oden meal with no problems at all. It also helped that the younger serving girl also spoke a bit of English. Mum got sandwiches and I got a hot meal (that was VERY nice) and better service than what we got at the hotel restaurant (and it was about 2/3rds the price). The smiles I got on the faces of the people in the 7-11 clone when I bumbled my way through their language was just amazing. I think I kind of take it for granted that people are going to speak English when they come to my country. Rather humbling when the tides are turned on you and you're the one struggling to get your point across in a country where you don't speak the language.

DAY 2 30th of August

We flew to Rome. 'nuff said. Bloody long flight and I have decided the next time I have a flight that long I'll fork out the extra money for business class. It was torture in Economy.

We landed in Rome and I discovered the advantage of having an EU passport. I was through the immigration line in no time, mum took half an hour. We found the hostel no problems, but rome is going through a REALLY hot summer. The hostel doesn't have aircon. UGH!!!! Oh, and we had pizza for dinner.

DAY 3 31st of August.

Woke up at 7am and booked ourselves into a Rome by night walking tour and a Vatican tour for the next day. After that we had breakfast McDonalds and a Croissant and cuppuccino. After that we walked around the area we're staying in to see what was around. We saw the baths of DIocletian (which we couldn't actually see inside of 'cause they're renovating) and Michealangelo's Courtyard (WOW).Then we wandered around Republic Square for a while (it has a VERY cool fountain). I bought myself a hat, 'cause I left mine at home, and we hopped on a open air tour bus to see the main sights of rome from the comfort of a (rather hot,  I discovered) seat.

Rome is HUGE. The Colesseum is ENORMOUS (TV and pictures don't do it justice). The roman forum and the hill thingy are amazing and we even went over the Tiber river (which is filthy) and saw a gazillion other things (which I took photos of). After the bus tour we went to find some lunch. We ended up at a steak and pizza place.

This was about the point when the Jetlag started to kick in. Jetlag SUCKS big hairy donkey's balls!!!!

Anyway, after lunch we went in search of a pair of thongs for me to wear around the (rather dingy, but clean) hostel room and bought some postcards. Mum then had a nap and I headed up to the common room/lounge area to write some postcards and down a 1.5L bottle of cold water.

5:00 I went down and got mum and we made our way to Piazza Navaro. There we witnessed the Running of the Bags. A bunch of guys who were selling goods illegally were being chased by plain clothes police around the piazza. It was hilarious to watch (and it kept all the tourists entertained, let me tell you. There's this picture I took of a street performer, he was one of those guys that looks like a statue, that was a take off of what was happening in the Piazza...*SNORK*). I think the police had the piazza blockaded off and at one point they nearly took out half the tourists in the piazza by crazy reverse driving (think like that scene from teh Davinci Code where they drive a smart car backwards down the street in Paris)...well crazier than what I've been seeing in Rome, anyway. This huge herd of men carrying numerous bags, sunglasses etc. would go stampeding from one end of the piazza to the other dropping things every now and then as they went. About 5 minutes later they'd come stampeding back again... then the police started chasing on foot. The tourists didn't know where  to look. THEN one guy makes a break for it after he's been nabbed and we got to watch the police body slam this poor guy into a rather hard looking palace door and then dogpile him on the ground *winces* I heard the crunch from 100m away. It HAD to hurt! Meanwhile the street performers keep performing as though nothing is happening.

Anyway, the walking tour was amazing. Trevi fountain is HUGE!!! Did you know the sun doesn't set here until about 8:00pm, maybe at bit later? It's most bizarre. We got to the Roman forum just as the sun was about truly set. It was one of the best vantage points for that particular attraction and the sight was just eerie. There weren't any tourists in there, there was no-one around, it was just, wow.

We finished the tour at the Colesseum and then mum and I caught the metro back to Termini and went in search of food. We ended up with pizza again, but just from a different place.

Right now I'm going cross-eyed trying to type this up 'cause I'm seriously jet-lagged. Mum's worse, she's got a major headache and she's conked out next to me. I expect her to start snoring soon.

Tomorrow we're going to do some washing and then go and see the vatican.

DAY 4 1st of september

Well, the Vatican was a bust, as was the washing (but I don't really need to go into that). Turns out the tour agency decided to cancel the tour and forgot to tell the girl at our hostel. Mum and I stood around for an hour before we went back to get our money back. Mum and I weren't really happy about that, but we got over it.

The good news is that because of that we now know where to go to get a decent  breakfast (none of this croissant business). It's an Irish pub. We went there today for lunch. Had a mixed grill (meeeeeaaaaat) and guinness. We'll be back there for breakfast tomorrow.

After that we decided to go and have a look at the Colesseum. Did I mention that that place is HUGEHUGEHUGE!!!? By the time we got out were so dehydrated that we couldn't even spit. Word of warning, don't buy water from the little stalls around the Colesseum. They're a major rip off. They wanted 5 Euros for 2 500mL bottles of water whereas just down the road from where we're staying we can get two 1.5L bottles  of water for 3 Euro. We stormed off in disgust.

Oh, before I forget. Italian men seem to like me, either that or I have some sort of really odd major deformity that's visiable  to just them. I get stared at, a LOT!! Not just a little stare mind you, I'm talking about turning heads and staring long after I've passed them (a couple of them have made my shoulder blades itch). I'm beginning to feel like a peice of meat with breasts.

Right, where was I?

I hate European keyboards. I went into an internet cafe today to do my email etc. and spent 5 minutes trying to type an @. I had to call the guy over to get him to show me how (to which he says "What's wrong with you?" *scowl* I'm not used to the bloody keyboard, that's what!).

After that we decided to go and have dinner out near the Trevi Fountain. Now THAT was an adventure. I worked out what station to get off at easily enough, it was actually FINDING the fountain that was the hard part. They say that there are signs  marking how to get there, but there aren't any anywhere NEAR the metro station. It took a lot of deduction to work out where the bloody hell we were. Bumped into a group of lost Americans who were trying to find the fountain as well and I ended up leading them there 'cause by that time I had a vague idea of where I actually was. Found it, and they took off without even a thank you (which I thought was rather rude, but there you have it). We went to this little place that had rather nice food, though I haven't actually had any bad food since I've been here.

Getting back again after dinner proved to be a challenge. They'd shut the metro down, hadn't they. And I had no idea of the bus system. We lucked out, let me tell you. A bus with Stazione Termini drove past and stopped near us as I was starting to panic (our only other option was to walk back. I was not in the mood for that). We squished ourselves into that (the bus was absolutely PACKED).

Now I'm about ready for bed. The jetlag is being an absolute bugger. I hate it. Can't wait to get over it. I get to about 4pm (here) and start drooping 'cause my body's trying to tell me it's about 2 or 3 in the morning. Then I alternate between really, really tired and dizzy spells.

I think tomorrow I'm going to go and check out the Palantine hill and the Roman Forum.

DAY 5 2nd of August

Today was the day of the tour bus. We got up later (about 7:40) and then went to Maccas again for breakfast. After that I ran about trying to work out how the hell to post postcards. Eventually found out that you have to go to a Tabacchi shop, buy  stamps, lick 'em *shudder*, and then post them in a post box. Harder than it sounds, believe me.

After that adventure we went and bought tickets to the Archeobus. An open air bus that goes out of the Roman walls to see the old roman ruins,  the Appian Way, the Catacombs and a few other things. You can get on and off it whenever you want to. We didn't actually get off 'cause that meant walking, and we were thoroughly sick of walking (and our legs are absolutely killing us). We were driving this great big bus on ORIGINAL parts of the Appian Way and when I say orginal I mean original. They were the same stones that were originally laid down when it was first built. The historian in me was having a minor fit. We also went to the aquaduct.

The bus trip was amazing, and we actually managed to find the english channel on the audio guide so we knew what we were looking at. Very informative.

Next was lunch and after that I gave in to how tired I was feeling and went to have a nap. Turned out to be a couple of hours sleep. Mum tried to wake me up and had a good laugh when I grumbled at her "I is dead!".

After I finally managed to pry my eyes open enough and fell out of bed we decided to do one of those Christian Rome bus tours. We didn't want ot do the one inside of Rome 'cause we'd pretty much seen most of what we wanted to see there, but we DID want to see outside of Rome so we took line B: S. Paolo. That trip was amazing! We went through the Traveste (or however you spell it) and up one of the mountains surrounding Rome and the view from up there was breathtaking, you could see just about all of Rome. Then we headed up the Appian way again and slowly made our way back into Rome.

If you ever get here I do suggest doing as many open air bus tours as you possibly can. They're worth the money.

Dinner was at a little workers cafe/bar thing and now I'm going to go to bed. Good night.