Rome day 2

Alright, alright... Well yesterday I woke up and layed in bed for a while, I got up around 10am. I showered and went downstairs to have a little breakfast. I saw Fabio and we sat down and had a couple espressos and I ordered a basic breakfast of a roll with jam and butter a kiwi and espresso, feeling very European by the way. We chatted and when he left he took care of the bill, Italian Kerry? Cool, let me reiterate the coolness of these people. I thought of taking the Metro to the Colosseum, but I decided to walk. So I headed to the Repubblica to walk staight down to the Colosseum. I left at 11:00am and the next tour was at 2:pm, shit, plenty of time. Rome is strife with amazing shit, in the background was so much to see I got diverted several times, and took many photographs. I passed the Forum, and Colosseum, and tried not to check it out as I knew they would be on the tour, but couldn't help it. I'll be honest, the feeling I got when walking around these things was, I don't know man.. overwhelming? I really don't know what else to say. There is just so much history here, I mean the foundation of government structure, art, urban planning, plumbing, design, freedom, equality, and mass entertainment were founded here, amongst other things. Being fucking surrounded by it all, not mentally, but actually seeing it, I felt emotional and a little choked up. Full, like I couldn't take in any more. I've seen amazing old sites but really nothing like this. If you have any interest in social anthropology, people, art, history, architecture, government, war, games, anything, and you have but a fucking scrap of an idea what any of this shit is..... come to Rome, it will seriously not dissapoint. I got to my next tour an hour early so I stopped at a Trattoria for caprese and soda. Justin the next guide was also awesome, funny and very knowledgeable. Canadian. We saw the mouth of truth, which Romans laugh at tourists because the mouth of truth is a five foot high round stone object with a face in the middle, well when it was unearthed the founding party thought it would be more interesting and valuble with a story, they were right. They came up with a story that if you were to put your arm in the mouth of the face, and made a false statement, lied, the mouthwould bite you. Well the Catholic church bought it with the thought of, hell, we can use this in our campaign of power. So people that they wanted condemned were asked to place their arm in the mouth and make their statement, were bit by the animal that they placed behind it and were sent for punishment. But seriously who would actually lie if they thought they would get fuckin bit. Gullible. This was also popularized by a movie in the fifties starring Gregory Peck. Well really it's about shit, people shat in the streets. Consider that amount of scat, when at its height, the Roman Empire had 1.2 million people, so in its infancy, they designed the first sewer system to pipe the shit out of Rome. So the name for this artifact in latin is the great anus of Rome, because it was discovered it was a manhole cover basically for the ancient Roman human shit evacuation system. And, with the popular movie, people line up for hours to get their balled up little fists, photo documented, plunging into the great anus of Rome. Which for me was actually a selling point. A photo of me with my fist up great Romes asshole, shit, what about me tongueing it? Awesome..... we saw buildings by Octavius Ceaser, and the forum. The Pantheon, which was built in like 200 A.D. and had the biggest dome in the world till the 70's when the Houston Astrodome was built. Made with unreinforced concrete (which Romans invented) people still can't figure out how to pour that much concrete with no rebar in the time it would take to start drying, about two hours. It's 45 meters in diameter, it's huge. And the Colosseum is just badass. Read about how many animals and men were butchered there. Craziness. Anyway walked back to the hostel after and had a seat and started writing this. I was about to order a bottle of wine when I saw Tad, he was going in and asked if I wanted a drink, i said a bottle of wine, which I was planning on drinking myself. He said how about a glass, I said ok, well he came back with a bottle, which we drank in 20 minutes. He also refused to take money for it, really? He left, I ordered another bottle and some osso bucco and ate and drank and wrote. I met some Austrians sitting next to me and we talked and finished a 3rd bottle, till about 1:00am. Jesus. Well I woke up this morning at 8am, just had some muesli and fruit with yoghurt and a cappucino, finished writing this, I got too drunk last night to finish, and in less than an hour I'm heading to my last tour, again with Justin, to the Vatican. Vatican City, it's own country, trippy. I'll tell you later what happened.