97 Days, 12 Countries, 1 Kangoo

To start off, thank you Carlos for buying a plane ticket, booking a hotel, and somehow managing to keep a positive outlook after losing your luggage for 2 days. You helped make our adventure in Rome very memorable. And on with the show:

One thing we've learned in Rome is to never believe an Italian.

• If they tell you that your train leaves at noon and is on track (binario) three, it's a LIE! Most likely your train will leave about 45 minutes late and spontaneaously, and unannounced, will be changed to track 8. But, I guess we shouldn't complain - we have heard that the transit workers are now on strike, so traveling anywhere would be virtually impossible now.

  
  

• Never ever listen to directions from an Italian website. Carlos, Chris and I wanted to do something fun to celebrate Thanksgiving and it just so happened that a Mexican guitar duo we all love was playing in Rome that night. So...we bought the tickets online and consulted the bar's website for directions to the venue. Well... the website LIED! We took the subway to the stop that looked to be only three blocks from the bar. And after walking around onto an on ramp of a divided highway and feeling like we were in a really sketchy area, we got a cab to drive us to the "Beer Station". In addition to the bar's website making it look subway accessible, it also never mentioned that the Metro stops running around 11PM...

  Lies, all lies.

Other random things we learned about Italians:

• They don't care about Thanksgiving. We decided to go out for a nice lunch to celebrate one of our favorite holidays. Maybe our most favorite holiday! Carlos tried to explain to our waitress that ( I need to quote here) "In America, today is a holiday. It's the Dia de las grazie. It's like Christmas". She didn't give a shit, but we appreciate Carlos's effort. And did really enjoy our meal!

  
  

• Wine openers are weapons. I should have known this since my wine opener was confiscated at the museum in Florence that housed the David, but I apparentely didn't get the clue that it was a banned weapon in Italy. While waiting in line to get into St. Peter's Basilica I noticed a sign that had a picture strictly forbidding wine openers. It didn't say anything about knives or guns or chinese stars, but it did say that wine openers were NOT ALLOWED. Hmmmm, and I thought the Italians loved their wine...

  
  

• If you sit down at a restaurant and their menu has pictures of the food, DO NOT EAT THERE! We only fel for this once and it was bad. I'm talking gross microwaved cardboard gross. Gross. This is NOT Italian food.

  
  

• American college-aged kids really love the oldies. After our concert night on Thanksgiving we ventured out to the bars in Rome. The bar that looked most happening was filled with American college students and they loved, I mean LOVED, all the songs from the 70s and 80s. It was bizarre. And there was even an Axel Rose look-alike to boot.

  
  

On on a more serious note, we really loved Rome. Every corner you turned there was some other site to see that was 2000 years old. It was just mind blowing how much history this city holds. It truely is the Eternal City. Some of the best things we weren't able to capture in the pictures - The Sistine Chapel, great meals, "Roming" around the streets, and entertaining cafe owners.

One of our personal favorite's was a man who owned a local grocery store in Soriano. During our 'day off' from commuting to Rome we decided to take advantage of the kitchen in our room and cook dinner in. We were attracted to this store by the amazing variety of cheeses visible from the front door. The old man who ran the store stood behind the cheese counter and managed the activities of the small store, where his son and grandson were also present. We picked out some fresh pasta and asked him for some pancetta. He asked us if we were going to be cooking these two items together - when we explained we were, he suggested we add some tomatoes and parmesan cheese. He even came out from behind the cheese counter (revealing his true height - 5'!) to slect the perfect loaf of bread.We went home and cooked our meal and returned a couple hours later to purchase more some more items for dinner, we were welcome with smiles. It was a small interaction but it embodied the friendliness, food loving and familial nature of the Italian people, which more than outweighs the logistical nightmares and miscommunitation we may have encountered.

Check out the videos from the amazing concert - Thanks Carlos!! And if you have not heard Rodrigo y Gabriela, we highly recommend them - just extremely talented and passionate. A special thanks to Brad Zollner for turning Chris on to them before we left.

And of course, the pics:
http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=183977300/a=7226152_7226152/t_=7226152

We apologize for the dropoff in frequency of our posting - it is not fun for us to caption 150 photos at a time, so we will do our best to stay on top of it - Marseilles, Barcelona and Madrid coming soon.

Miss you all! Go Celtics!! (Although it is a little premature for ESPN.com to compare them to the 96 Bulls - I watched every game that year and they were on a different planet)

-Taice & Chris