Roman Rains and Assisi Rays

We are now in Rome and had quite the adventure yesterday. But first have to tell of our new found love of Assisi! Such a cute cute town. WE also had an adventure there with accomodations but luckily some cool aussies (they really are so down and cool) helped us out with a great campsite for only 17 euro to go to. And it was conveniently close to town, just up a hill which tony had fun making me run up the next morning ( we are trying to be healthy and work out 4 times a week, he loves it and im getting to loving it.) Anyways but the convenience also made it so we could be on our own time in the town. WE saw the big St. Francis church there and wandered around the city. We played some crib and browsed through the shops. when the sun was setting we wandered to the castle at the top of town that overlooks a tuscan valley below, it was gorgeous. We both rated Assisi up there for sure.

From Assisi yesterday we came to Rome and headed to Pomezia, two train stops away where we had a hotel booked and man was that intense. We had no idea where or what Pomezia was but we assumed it would work out and we could take a bus there, man were we wrong. First off, the entire trip we have probably had a max of 5 minutes of rain, never really been stuck in it either, even in the UK. When we arrived in Rome it was raining, pretty hard. Which wasnt to bad because it was really humid and hot. Anyways so in Pomezia we tried asking any passer bys, they all just stared at us with blank looks, "holiday inn? what is this?" We found a bar that Tony went to charge our phone at, I stayed by the bus stop with the bags. Across the street was a lady in high platforms, a pretty reavealing dress and dancing to some music on her ipod. I watched her for a hwile and came to the conclussion she was a hooker. We had that confirmed after she got picked up, and then dropped back off an hour later. It was awesome. Also in Tonys absence I was approached by an old man in a truck, which I think he thought I was ahooker. He called me over to his truck, I thought he was trying to help and we had a little chat which neither of us understood the other but I was bored so I didnt care, until he starting saying a few things and then he grabbed himself. At that point I said NO and walked away. I have no idea what he was trying to say but I was not down with talking to him anymore.

Tony finally came back and he was really mad. The hotel receptionist informed us that the hotel was 8km outside of the town of Pomezia and the only way to get there is by a taxi which would cost 25 or 30 euro. So every time we wanted to come into Rome we had to pay that. We were not down with this. We tried for a hour and half to figure out if any buses went there but every bus that came pointed us to another bus which was funny because there was only two buses. In order to not get charged anything I had to cancel the reservation by 4pm, it was approaching four quickly. Due to our mishap in Siena when we got to the closed campground, the lady gave us a lil booklet of campgrounds in europe, so we found one in Rome and called to make sure it was open and available. once that was confirmed I quickly called the hotel to cancel luckily in time! We left the sketchy town of Pomezia to head to our campground. The campground is awesome, 23 euros so pretty good and free internet! A bar, free transportation from the train station and a pool.

We decided we needed to lighten our load of the beers and liquor we had been carrying around for 4 nights and after the day we had it seemed like the right night to do it. So we loaded up the day pack, no food just the beers and headed into Rome. We wandered around till we got to the Fontana de Trevi (Trevi Fountain) which was really cool, but filled with tourists there. There was a guy selling little tourist things like light wands and these two magnets you catch together and make a funny noise. He was showing them to Tony when a cop started to pull up, he ran into the crowd (apparently its illegal for them to be selling stuff there?). Because he fled Tony was confused but down with his new free toy. So we started to walk away, the guy followed us but then the cops came back so we chilled by the cops, as for once they were a benefit to us! Eventually we left the fountain to try to find a cool bar. Unfortunately there were none to be found anywhere near us. So we tried asking varios people and finally found two dudes that were from there that were going to the area with bars. We followed them on various buses and eventually got to the area, but most of the bars were closed because ti was a monday. After wandering around more with these locals, who spoke very little english and spanish, but somehow we had conversations, kind of. Eventually we decided we had a long road ahead of us of trying to figure out how to get back to our campsite since the trains stopped at midnight and it was 1 am.

We figured out the bus system and finally made it back to the station in our little town of prima porta, but then we had a mile walk to the campsite, luckily our packs were lighter though so we were happy and content. It was a fun night in Rome, and today we are headed out to see the Ancient City and have a good Italian meal tonight.