Italy!

So....we have moved out of the land of Englishness and into our first non english speaking country....do you think its arrogant to wonder why the signs arent in English???? surely they know that we dont speak Italian...lol. Anyway, the Rome customs was awesome, we strolled up, got our passports stamped and then wandered on...mint! No worries, even beat all the people from the EU countries as they had to go the other line and we were the only ones in the non-EU line...sweet. Had a wee bit of drama however on the other side...so the smarty pants that i am decided that i wouldnt get Euros out till we got here, of course i would be able to find an ATM at the airport...right! Well finding the ATM turned out not to be a problem, however the fact that all of the airports ATMs were down was a wee bit worrying. Not to worry tho, cos we decided to just get cash out on our visa at the travelex and change that to Euros, however for whatever reason of course our stupid card kept getting declined. Mint! Literally stuck in Romes freakin airport with NO money whatsoever! We are sooo smart.
Luckily someone then told us that we could use our visa to pay for the train ticket we needed to get into downtown, where we were able to find useable ATMs. So that was our slightly stressful intro to Rome. When we got off the train, i was fairly confident that i knew where i was going and blissfully ignored Calebs ideas/pleas to buy a map of the area, so for about 30 min i wandered a wee bit lost around the train station looking for the street i knew was just round here somewhere....teehee. Anyway, we made it to our hostel???if you can call it that, kinda bizarre, but not too bad. The guy on the desk likes us so gave us a free upgrade to a private room, no complaints here. However it is 41 degrees, and we dont have airconditioning, so its kinda like a sauna at times, but we have the fan working overtime to make sure we keep the hot air circulating! lol. Caleb is a special fan of the bed cos its quite short and he actually cant fit on it...oh well, it works well for me. Just before we left for Rome, Jess looked up our hostel on Tripadvisor and we had a good laugh(all be it nervously) as we read about how previous people would in no way recommend the hostel to anyone because of the blood on the floor and the bountiful supply of bedbugs....fortunately we have not been blessed with either!

Spend a long but amazing day today looking at things that i thought Caleb and i would find tedious and boring....who woulda thought that people of our great intellect and education would find classical history and art history at all interesting! But we were pleasantly surprised. We were wowed by St Peters Basilica and then by the arty stuff in the Vatican museums, the sistine chapel is pretty sweet too. Then we went and saw the spanish steps, Trevi fountain, Pantheon and the Colosseum. A long, incredibly hot day, but very very cool. Caleb and i are still tripping out over all the free water that is available around the city from various fountains etc and it comes out icy cold, definately needed on days like today. So far has been an amazing introduction to Italy. Heading out tomorrow for Naples. If we can avoid being murdered by the mob and the pickpockets im sure our holiday will continue to be mint. Sweet off to savour the delicious gelato options next door, to wash down my pizza! Ciao!!! (oh my gosh im so cultured!)