Arrivederci Italy

 Tomorrow we fly to Madrid, Spain, but here are some of the highlights (good & bad) from Rome, Italy.

Let's start off with the bad, well almost bad.  Two members of our group Ed and Pam took the subway (metro) on our day off.  Ed felt something and looked down and his wallet was halfway out of his front pocket. (That's how good these pickpockets were), he then looked at Pam and her purse was almost entirely unzipped.  Two guys working in tandem.  Once caught, they ran.  Man, that could have been bad!

Now the good or just highlights.  In London and Paris it was filled with electric bikes.  In Rome, I saw motorcycles everywhere.  I think I already mentioned that elevators start on 0 with the ground floor.  That's hard to get used to.  We went to the Coliseum. Think Russell Crowe in Gladiator.  We saw where the free men fought for money and the slave men fought for freedom.  The loser for whatever reason, maybe he lost his sword or was injured,  it was then determined by the crowd if he should live to fight another fight or die(well who doesn't like democracy).  It was interesting that the audience in the Coliseum sat according to social status.  Think basketball and the nosebleed section.  The higher up you go the lower class you are.  They also had animals there, lions, tigers, etc kept in cages underneath the arena. And the animals, say the lions were kept in the dark for two days and not fed for two days to make them more aggressive.  Then when they raised them in the arena there was a "good" show.  Afterwards, whatever animal was left standing the gladiators could kill them.  I was really not happy hearing about all this and didn't want a memento of it.  

A funny thing happened.  When Steve and I went to a nice Italian restaurant. I ordered a lemonade.  Most of the restaurants and food establishments have lemonade or coke.  They brought me a lemonade and I told Steve it tasted like there was alcohol in it.  But I drank it all.  I found out later it was a limoncello.  

Ok, must get up early to fly to Spain.  

Ciao

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