We walk everywhere, so we're getting tons of exercise to work off all the food we're eating. The food here is excellent - we haven't had a bad meal yet. Oh, and I can now toss back an espresso in two gulps! Maybe by Sunday I can make it one gulp. And without sugar! It still takes hubby three or four gulps, and with sugar. Hee!

There are a lot of tourists here. We were lucky on Tuesday for our tour of the Forum and the Colosseum - very few people due to the rain. Today we retraced our steps, and the amount of people had to have gone up about ten times what we had on Tuesday. We went on a tour of the Vatican museums yesterday, tons of people and the only part that made it worthwhile was seeing the sistine chapel. Oh my goodness. What a marvel that was. We only got fifteen minutes in there, but it almost made up for all the hassle.

We've been lighting candles for everyone back home at every church we walk into; St. Peter's, unfortunately, didn't have candles to light. But we got to walk down underneath the church, where they bury popes. We saw the resting place of Pope John Paul I. Pretty cool.

Today we braved the metro and went to Monte Martini museum, which is showing most of the ancient statuary that normally resides in the Capitoline Museum. My favorite statue, however, had gone with 399 others to this Monte Martini Museum which is housing the statues in a temporary setting amidst huge machinese from the early 20th Century. The air had a film of machine oil on it, and the statues next to these huge wrenches and whatnot just made a marvelous juxtaposition of materials.

My statue has become two statues, now. My first favorite is the Esquiline Venus, so called because it was found on the Esquiline Hill. She's thought to be a representation of Isis. My second favorite statue is called The Muse, a young woman holding a scroll and leaning, lost in thought, against a pillar. (suddenly the word 'pillar' looks wrong, but no other vowel than an 'a' looks less wrong.)

Woke up with a bad sore throat, but I've been soldiering on and hoping to kill it soon. It's just on to 5:15pm here, which is 8:15am Los Angeles time. I need to find a Farmacia, and then take a hot shower and a nap before dinner at eight.

Ah. This is the traveling life. If only our room was nicer...