I've been here exactly seven days, so that obviously means it's time for a list of seven important things I've learned in Rome so far. I wish these were somehow in the order of the days, but I'm far too lazy for that.

1. House Wine is great. Long (three hour) large (both food and people-wise) meals with liters of house wine are excellent. And much cheaper than a bar or a club. We did a lot of that in Greece and it was good, and I'm very much enjoying doing it here. Also, they charge for water in most restaurants, and wine ends up being about the same price or cheaper so...take that jesus!
2. Thursday is Gnocchi night everywhere.
3. Sink Laundry is not great sucks. It costs about 6 euros to do a load of laundry in our hotel/dorm, which is evidently a good deal compared to a Laundromat. My attempts at sink laundry have been...unsuccessful to say the least. Also sink laundry in London (well bathtub laundry actually) made both Cry's and my clothes a little mildewy cause we both incorrectly assumed they'd just dry in a few hours. They were still wet when we got to Rome. Yipee
4. Everything closes from around 1pm to 4pm if it doesn't serve food. I guess everyone takes a nap, goes home to eat with their family, or gets drunk. Whatever. It's good work if you can get it I guess.
5. Receiving cell phone calls in Europe (or maybe just Italy) is free. Totally free. It's pretty awesome. I just got a phone, gime a call. (011 for international ) (country code 39) 348.768.9781 . Yep. Won't cost me a dime. You on the other hand...
6. Often you have to pay more to eat sitting down. Eating standing up is far cheaper.
7. You can drink and fill your water bottles out of the fountains in most cases. They may even be served by the original aqueducts.
8. The coffee really is better. Espresso is actually drinkable and cappuccino is awesome. Ok that was a lame one but I'm hungry and people want the computer.
   
   
   

Fountain

Fountain

Mom, Dad, Genna, and Norm, this is the area that you're staying in in Trastevere. Well it's half way between the areas that you guys are staying. Or something.

Whatever, it's pretty and has the best gelato I've ever had.

Zagorakis!

My, I've been writing a lot about jogging. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but here's one more that has less to do with jogging and more to do with me being culturally insensitive (another common theme actually).

When I was in Delphi I bought a Greek soccer jersey and I've been running in it a lot, both at home and now here. I thought I was pretty cool, but it seemed that I was getting dirty looks here. I wasn't sure if I smelled bad, or they just didn't like the looks of me or didn't like Greece's soccer team, but yesterday the guy at the front desk clued me that this is Totti country. Wearing a Zagorakis jersey is not looked so kindly upon. In fact they pretty much hate him.

I mean... I'm not going to stop wearing it or anything.

The Park

Trees and People in the Park

There is a great park a few minutes fromt he Villa Bassi where Crys and I have been running. I'm not sure of the name but it includes the Giancolo hill. It's full of fountains, lakes, and jogging sweaty old Italian men. More photos of it on flickr and to come.

The Villa Bassi

The Villa Bassi

...is the first building on the right of the photo. I took it from this angle on purpose, as it looks pretty crappy from any angle, but at least this way you got to see the tree and down the street.

The Villa Bassi (on the inside) isn't actually bad at all. It isn't exactly five stars, but the profs described it to us as much more dilapidated than it is. It's no fun having a roommate again, but he's a good guy so it's not a problem.

Right down the street is the most incredible pizzeria, which sells pizza not by the standard slice, but by the pound (fine, kilo). And they have about 50 different types ready for you to try. I just had a piece. I think it may have had Gorgonzola on it (It was probably blue cheese --Ed.)

Rome Still

Well I'm still in Rome, unsurprisingly. It's fantastic so far. Beautiful weather, great food, incredible sights and architecture as far as the eye can see. The kids in the program are pretty good, though there's this one girl named Crys who seems particularly cool. There's a huge park we went running in that may or may not be called the Gianicolo. At the very least that's the name of the hill. We've been going out to long dinners with a large groups of kids, and drinking fair amounts of the cheap house wines. Kinda reminds me of Greece.
Class starts Monday. Yay hundreds of pages of dense architectural reading plus a bunch of Livy.

Norm gets here in about a week. I'm pretty excited.

Also, does anyone know how to get in touch with Joanna? I emailed her but...yeah. Joanna, post a comment or email me or something.

In Rome

Yep. We're in Rome. It was a pretty intense (read: horrible) international travel experience. We almost missed the bus to Stansted from Marble Arch, as the concierge told me 2:45 AM and the bus came at 2:30. Luckily we made it, and got to Stansted Airport at about 4AM for our 6:10 flight. We had to wildly reorganize our stuff in order to pay for as little excess luggage as possible, but still ended up spending a ton of money on it (damn textbooks). The flight was actually fine, probably the highlight of the trip. The seats on Ryanair did in fact recline, and the windows did have shades, contrary to rumor.
When we finally got to Rome, I realized we weren't at the airport that the directions expected us to be at, but we made it here fine.
Rome is very beautiful from what I have seen so far. It rained an enormous amount earlier and we got soaked and then went out to dinner with most of the group.

Last Day in London

On Monday we went to see Le Miserable at the Queens Theater which was pretty awesome. I'd forgotten how good a world class musical is. Yeah I'm kinda lame, but Crys had a great time as well. After that we hung out in Leister Square and got something to eat, like we've been doing pretty much every night, as we tend to miss normal dinner hours, and sort of have to go where everything is open until 4.

Yep, it's our last day. Not sure what we'll do. Maybe the British Museum. Maybe Camden town. In any case, when first, Crys and I have resolved to run all the way around Hyde Park. The entire thing. Crap.

Room View pt 2

Room View
Originally uploaded by zazerr.

This is the view from our room if you crane your neck a lot. It's a great view of Hyde Park (which Crys and I did, in fact, run all the way around) and Marble Arch.

Room View

Room View
Originally uploaded by zazerr.

This is the view out the window in our room.

Fireworks over Tate

DSCF1247
Originally uploaded by zazerr.

That same Thames River festival put on these fireworks over the Tate Modern. Click it to get to my flickr account and see some of the other pictures I uploaded.

Shopping

The last few days we've done a lot of shopping. It's been fun, but the problem is neither of us actually like to buy things, especially highly expensive things. So we've been having pleasant walks around some of the most expensive and opulent shopping districts in the world... and of course buying nothing. Actually that's not true, Crys bought some face stuff from Lush and I bought some shoes, though neither were all that expensive (don't worry, the shoes are suspiciously similar to my old ones.)

Pictures

In a truly harrowing internet cafe experience, Crys managed to upload a few pictures to her flickr account. She had no idea which she was choosing, so don't hold it against her. The url is http://www.flickr.com/photos/crys1/ . I'll put mine up as soon as I can, or you know, I take some good pictures.

In a Really Annoying Internet Cafe

Yep. We're here. We're having a great time so far, but we've been going hard so we're both pretty damn tired (and going on beautiful but insanely long runs around Hyde Park). London is fantastic, but, to confirm the rumors, extremely expensive. We've been all over the city, and I've gotten he hang of the tube pretty well. It's the best subway system I've ever been on and it's spotless, which is incredible considering you can eat and drink (booze) on it.

We spent today around Covent Garden Market and Petticoat lane. Yesterday we went to the Tower of London and the Bridge, and then we stumbled on a pretty cool festival on the way to the Tate Modern. Also we found some crazy food markets that I can't remember the name of but the motto was ''if we don't sell it, it's probably not worth eating.'' Friday I can barely remember because we've done so much stuff. I'll have to be more vigilante in updating this, and that may happen once internet isn't so damn expensive. And pictures. I'll add pictures soon.

Anyway, we're having a great time. Thank you everyone for your advice, emails and comments. We leave for Rome on Thursday.

Zach the Shyster ?

This is bordering on the exact sort of voyeurism I wanted to avoid here (me:exhibitionism, you: voyeur), but this does greatly effect the trip: I have decided not to go to law school next year. As a result, I no longer have to study for and take the LSATs from Rome, apply to law schools from Rome, or generally be stressed out, from Rome. My life just got simpler.

For the record, though, I am not not applying because of the Rome/Studying/Incredibly-Lazy-Factor. That would be a pretty invalid reason(s) to make such a big decision. I'm not applying because I feel like going to law school is the safe road. That I'll be doing it to avoid hard decisions (like this one) for the next three years, and presumably afterwards. I'd rather take my chances in the real world (read: military industrial complex) for at least a year or two, and then maybe go. All that legal jargon is a lot of fun to spout.

Sorry Norm. I guess your arrival to Rome will have to be enough reason to celebrate.

Give me Recommendations. Now. (Please?)

I've never spent much time in London, and I've never even been to Rome. You people keep telling me places to go, but I'm not smart enough to write them down. Well here's your chance.

Post those ideas and recommendations as comments to this post (click comments below) and... I'll go to those places and do those things. And probably post the good ones on this main page, so you can be ever so slightly more famous than you are right now. London especially, because we have a whole week there, and absolutely no obligations.

That means you, Nolan, Ariel, Colleen, Lydia, Rachel, and all the rest of you who have spent a significant amount of time in the UK.

Note: We're staying in Marble Arch, right by Hyde Park.

I Heart Priceline.com + Biddingfortravel.com

I really do. I'd never used them before this, but I knew the priceline game. You pick a region in the city you want to stay in, the dates, a number of stars, and then you name a price. It's a pretty great idea, and I'm sure they make plenty of money by tricking suggesting people bid too high.

And then there was a site called biddingfortravel.com. People post the details of their bids, and whether or not they were successful. It's brilliant. No longer do you have to fly totally blind on priceline. You can even predict (somewhat) what hotel you'll get.

After a few rebids and counter-offers by priceline, I ended up getting a four star (!) hotel in the center of London for $71 a night. Pretty good considering hostels were going to run us around $30/p/n. Even better when you realize that the "super special internet sale price" for the room on the hotel's own site 100GBP, which is about $190. I'm such a jew.

The Plan

OK, here's The Plan: Crys and I leave DC on September 15th for London. We stay there until the 22nd, when we fly on Ryanair to Rome. The week in London is going to be great, but getting our stuff from London to Rome may be a problem, as while Ryanair is incredibly cheap (about 2GBP each way + tax), their baggage allowance is only 15kg. Not a lot of room for three months worth of our crap, plus an enormous amount of books they're making us bring. It would have been much better/easier/more efficient if the University had just shipped our books over for us. Come on, economies of scale, people. I'll probably end up shipping our stuff from London to Rome. If for some crazy reason, you'll be in London during this time, let me know. We'll basically be on vacation.