Day 21 8th May 2011

Woke up in a full room…don’t recall if it was that way when I entered last night but there were four full beds…I had only met the grump the day before, now I also have Alex (Canadian/English/Italian) who is also heading to Melbourne and Paula who is currently residing in Dublin from Brazil and she is studying to be a naturopath.

After last night I thought bugger this I will head out on my own…so it was a quick hello and moving on… It is mother’s day today, so I called me mum and funnily enough this is the first mothers day in 5 years that I don’t have the boys…I spoke to IJ & MM but couldn’t get through to Nan to speak to Zachy… had a little tear but in a week I will be home.

Got dressed and went to brekky and sat with Alex, and Paula and what do you know we decided we will go and check the sites out…starting with the Vatican…which incidentally the museum is closed on Sunday…those Catholics welcome to the 21st century open 7 days ;-)

No matter mass was on and the pope wasn’t there but to the rest that didn’t matter, banners were flying high and the cheering non stop and the heathens continued to shoot photos. It’s hard not to be consumed by religious frenzy when you are in a place like this.

Loads of photos and then we started proceeding to the next site and the next site and I have to say Alex & Paula moved with ease and we just kept going from one site to the next and its probably different walking in the day than at night but we walked for 5 plus hours and it was grand we had time to shop, make phone calls and take many snaps. We didn’t make it back to the Colosseum but I thought I would do that tomorrow after my booked Vatican tour.

We did get a little lost but thankfully Alex and Paula got us back to the car and we ran into Joao and Pedro from last night so we were going to head back to the hostel. As soon as we got in the car and attempted to turn the Sat Nav it all went dead and our phones were flat and it was hilarious to be sitting in the car hopeless not knowing what direction…Paula had given Joao and Pedro a hard time telling them they jinxed us (I don’t think it was them) I think the lighter fuse had been overloaded and that was it… We made it to the Hostel with Alex navigating on his iPhone and all in all a good day.

New room mates with Alex moving out and two other Brazilians moving in…except they looked German or Swedes and the were of German ancestory and both were studying in Germany (one was working on a 3-D printing machine which sounded amazing but we never finished the conversation as everyone was in a rush to get to Dinner…incidentally dinner was pizza dough and that was basically it…I decided to skip it…my stomach complained and rather went to the corner shop and bought Pizza…

For the evening we decided we would go clubbing or see what the hell night life is there…we mad it to the clubs district and there was one club that had the same beef jerkies standing outside letting the women in and making the blokes wait and then their mates or those showing bills to em in… If there is Karma in the next life these poof heads will be turned into mice for the next life… needless to say Paula went in easily and us four blokes stood out there…Needless to say my patience wears thin for that shit and we moved on next door to a place called Musica…They had a band playing live (their name is the Camomile Factory) they gave us their CD after whooping our arses in foosball (that was the highlight of the night) and not to be too harsh but they sounded awful and I am yet to listen to their CD but hope it sounds better.

Was yacking away to the bar girl who has a friend in Australia that wanted to stay in Oz and “she just got married”…wow…bride visas in Oz…SCARY…
The trip back to the hostel was as eventful as trying to get a cab in Sydney at 3:00 am during X-mas…scum bag cabbies wanted to charge you more to get you there and even then they didn’t drop you off where you wanted them to… we got there and it was another night.

Day 20 7th May 2011

The day probably started much earlier but I will start it from the time I left the Hostel…The Portuguese/Lisbon airport was shambles and the only people I felt sorry for were the counter staff a s the schmucks that were on the airport floor could not organise a piss up in a brewery…word of warning if you are flying out of Lisbon allow at least 3 hours as two hours are never enough …oh and the automatic checking booth…is totally shite…

With that rant out of the way…It was interesting when I handed the car back to Hertz, they wanted to charge me for damage that was already there…thankfully, I pulled my trusty IPhone and showed them the picture from the airport at Barcelona, otherwise they would have charged me…in saying that I had to pay an extra 470 euros for dropping the car across the border… Mental note next time buy a car…its cheaper or better still use the trains and half the bag size.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1276&bih=621&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=rome&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=

After last night in Lisbon I was renewed with hope for Hostels and decided to go again… as I landed in the airport at Rome…I was handed the keys to a car and it was not an Alfa as promised…it was a Lancia…and might I add a shit-box of a car…probably, karma and wouldn’t be a bad thing for me to drive a slower car…especially, all the stories I heard about Italian highway patrols…

I got to Hotel Alessandro and it was pretty good…I was initially by myself in the room then got a grouch then I was out with some new friends, Portuguese, Turkish and Mexican…yes, Roma is a multicultural society too…especially in Hostels, after dinner, I decided I will drive to some sites and see them by night…

Got to the colosseum (and never made it back again ☹) and then headed into town and walked around 3 hours seeing the sites…now that was an hour and a half seeing the sites…40 minutes getting back to where we parked the car and 45 minutes lost in a three block radius with two GPSs and about as many maps and thank fk that none of us were on board with Christopher Columbus or Captain Cook for that matter…we would have been lost and perished at sea long before sunrise or even the first day is over… we finally made it and as enjoyable as the sites were the stress of finding the car and the constant nag swore not to do this again…next time I am heading out on my own…

One mental note, this day proclaims the start of Pizza and Ice cream diet almost everyday from here on. Yes I am staking on the kilos in Italy…