Rome and Florence in a day

I just about managed to murder both the parentals by dragging them around Rome all day in the blistering heat, but we saw everything we needed to see, well almost. Guided tour of the colosseum and the roman forum, Trevi fountain, Castel Sant'angelo, Tiber River and St Peters. We had to skip the Pantheon as their poor old legs were just over it! But to be quite frank, the whole day jusit reinforced my perspective on Rome - it is a magnificent city rich with thousands of years of history, a testiment to the amazing engineering powers of the Romans, and it is so superficial and commercial and crowded with tourists and dirty that I can never wait to get the hell away from the place!!! I'm so glad I'm living outside the centre of Rome now!

Florence, on the other hand, has been a beautiful experience. We shipped dad off on Tuesday morning back to Australia, well and truly ready to leave I think! Now it's just the Adlam women let loose in Europe. This is my second visit to the city of art, but since I was 15 the last time I was here I have certainly appreciated it a lot more. We were fortunate with trains and managed to get here from Rome at about lunchtime (1.5 hour eurostar trip) after accompanying dad to the airport, so we knocked off all the major sites on the first day - Duomo, Baptistry, Piazza della signoria, Arno River and Piazzale San Michelangelo (from which we watched the most AMAZING firey sunset over the city, a very pleasant surprise!), dined under the ancient city walls and cruised back via a very talented busking flautist outside the Uffizi gallery. And there hardly seemes to be any people or any annoying vendors selling their stupid noisy little toys - couldn't have had a better start to the stay.

Yesterday (Wed) was full of random encounters! I left mum to explore the Uffizi gallery in her own time while I perused the markets alone - dangerous for two reasons. First, I spent all my money on leather goods. Second, I stupidly wore my beautiful Australia T-shirt which always seems to make me a lot of friends wherever I go (it's awesome coming from a country that everyone loves!!!) and made a few less than desirable friends. Most of them were just interested in making a sale and were very sneaky, and just would NOT give up! One guy Luca was interested in other things... I agreed to have a glass of wine with him, in their family shop as he seemed like an interesting, well travelled sort of guy, and pretty cute to boot, except he just wasn't interested in talking so it all ended up pretty awkward... I avoided that street for the rest of the afternoon! But then I met a really sweet Mexican guy who didn't even try to sell me anything! So I decided he was trustworthy and had a decent chat to him - turned out he was just on a working holiday so didn't really care about selling leather, very nice change! His name was Elio and we had a good chat about languages, as he spoke Spanish and I'll be going there very soon! What a sweetheart he was! Lastly and most unexpectedly, as I sat waiting for mum to come out of the Uffizi, one of the millions of Moroccans who get around all the major cities selling illegal goods sat down next to me for a rest and, once again, didn't try to sell me anything. So I had a chat to him about Morocco and he was really nice too! He showed me a picture of his brand new baby nephew, just born in Italy, obviously very proud of his brother for establishing a family in Italy! He explained that alhtough the police fine them for selling their goods, nothing happens if they don't pay the fine. So there's not much they can do to stiop it!!!

Today we are off to Riomaggiore, the first of the Cinque Terre, and spending the afternoon there with Sonia, the crazy Italian girl who stayed with us for 5 months! Only she sounds so settled - she has a job, a licence, and a boyfriend of 3 years! Can't wait to see her! Oh, and also can't wait to walk the 9km from start to finish of the paths along the Cinque Terre. I hope I can get some photos up!!

Ciao for now,

Kels (and mum)