Three wolves™

Been hanging out in London this last week. Met up with lots of friends since I’ve been here and seen a bunch of interesting stuff including the Tower of London, Tower bridge, Trafalgar square, The National Gallery, walked along the Thames river, had dinner with Woka and Jen, dinner with Dave and Maz (and saw Dee and Daz really quickly on the way out!).

Staying with my sister in Clapham Junction, which is a nice place about 30 mins from the city center. Super easy to get around on the tubes and busses. I love places with good public transport!

Took a flight over to Rome, Italy on the weekend with Alana and some old friends: Tracey & Beth (who I travelled around S.E.A. with) and Josh who I went to high school with. We stayed three days and it was amazing. Rome is such a beautiful and laid back (apart from some of the traffic) place. It’s littered with and surrounded by amazing antiquities and you don’t have to travel far to find them either - they’re all right in the city! We went on a tour and walked around most of the classics: Circo Massimo (massive entertainment/chariot racing venue), Trajan column, the Roman forum (huge celcebration parties held here after kicking ass in battle), the Pantheon (one stop deity shop), the Jewish Ghetto (Jews got rounded up and placed here), Colosseum, Mouth of Truth, the site of Julius Caesar’s assassination, Piazza Venezia, and Mussolini’s balcony! It was about a 4 hour tour all up and it was brilliant for giving you a good orientation of the city as well as some good history from a pretty entertaining tour guide. Won’t bother you with the details of the history, but it was fascinating, brutal, violent and full on. Checked out the Vatican and St. Peter’s bascillica plus the sistine chapel on the monday too. Sistine chapel was dumbfounding. I wish there was some way to get right up close to the frescoes, but the enormity and scale of it all was enough.

Ate some superb food while in Rome: tasty authentic pizzas, amazing espresso coffee (everywhere! I swear even corner dairy owners know how to brew a god espresso!), bruchetta to die for, pasta that melts in your mouth and extremely quaffable wine. I think I’ve loaded on a few pounds over the weekend!

The people are lovely and really helpful. We met a really nice old restaurant owner who helped us with our order, brought out all the different types of food that they cook so we could see what each dish was and was a pretty funny fella to boot.

All this in a setting to die for: gorgrous old buildings everywhere, not to mention the amazing antiques, with not a Reading Cinemas in sight!

Off to Greenwich tomorrow and catching dinner and Les Mis with Alana wednesday night, to bath on friday then Hong Kong on saturday! I am crazy…

Currently listening to: The Postal Service