Just a-Romeing around...

I thought up the title myself. Pretty clever eh?

I missed one our driving stories from France so I'm going to backtrack a little here.

SO, Kristi is driving along the highway, Lauren is navigating in the backseat, while I'm in the front trying to control my motion sickness. We're getting closer to our destination and know we have to turn off soon. We see our exit marked on a sign and assume that it is the next exit over and so we take it... as it turns out it is in fact just a pit stop. So, we have to get back onto the highway, a very scary task when you're not used to even just merging on the French highways. But that's fine, we're on now. Must be the next exit. We keep driving along, excited that we can merge onto highways without getting ourselves killed when another exit comes up. Okay, this must be it! That exit sign was ages ago so surely this is it.... no it's another pit stop, and we have to merge back onto the highway. Where the fuck is this exit? Well, as it turns out the French give you lots of time to prepare for their exits because ours didn't come up for another 10 minutes. How confusing! It made us begin to doubt ourselves! Maybe we missed! No, no we didn't... French highways are just stupid. End of story.

As I write this I am currently in Berlin. Such a cool city. Graffiti everywhere, gritty, some ugly modern buildings but it is actually really cool and so are the people. I can't wait until I get an apartment though because I am going crazy constantly being around people. As nice as they are. I'm looking forward to having a closed door. Went on a pub crawl the other night which was super fun. Our roommates are really nice, one left for Prague this morning while the other two - one Canadian, one French Canadian - we've been hanging out with.

The Irish cannot hold their liquor. These 19 year old Irish boys (highlight the word boys) were drunk before it even started and one had passed out by the time we got to the last pub. Spoke to the Irish guide who was really helpful with apartment issues and talked a lot about how awesome the city is to live and how easy it is to make friends. So yay! A lot of Berliners have many holes in their faces (aka piercings) so I'm thinking mine may not be too much of a problem when going to interviews. Hope not, I really don't want to take it.

Haven't begun looking for work yet, we want to get an apartment soon, hopefully by next week, but if it doesn't happen soon I'm going to start looking regardless. I've already mapped out the cities I want to visit while here. Maybe I'll make a timeline. Also want to visit LA to see ALI! Spoke to her on Skype yesterday and it was so good to see a friendly, familiar face.

Anyway... ROME!

I have 7 minutes to write this part.

After eating canned tuna and crackers in our hostel (living on a budget bites sometimes), we hopped on one of those red touristy buses and hit the town. As it turns out the Colosseum is a short 10 minute walk from our hotel. Radical! Drive passed that, drive passed the Vatican, head towards Trevi Fountain, Kristi and I spot some shops we want to check out so this is the main reason for our pit stop - not so we can soak up some culture, that would be crazy!

At the fountain I nudge a bunch of American tourists out of the way so I can eat my gelato (which tastes like strawberry hubba bubba) by the fountain. It is 40 degrees today and I could literally just dive right in. But instead I opt for sprinkling water over my arms and legs and throwing coins into the fountain for good luck. Then we head off for some shopping and I buy a cute dress. A very productive day.

3 minutes and counting, lucky I'm a fast typer. There will be no spell check this time so forgive me.

Then we head back to the Colosseum and I insist we go inside and have a squiz, I mean, why not? It is amazing! Our guide is this Italian man in his 50s who is funny but also sleazy, so like pretty much most young Italian men but just 20 years older.

Okay I have to go... will finish this one off later.

Ciao! I'm such a pro.