European Adventrue - Day 14

Not that you all would care, but deep down it really feels good to tell you that I got another chance to sleep in, so refreshing, so relaxing. Now, thats what I call getting up on the right side of the bed.

Because of the late hour, Jeff almost missed Breakfast cause it was taking him so long to 'primp' himself up for the day. We never would have heard the end of that if he didn't get his breakfast! While I was eating, the crazy old server lady brought me some sort of dirt flavored coffee rather than my usual Hot Chocolate. She must be in league with the local Gypsies. To punish her (and the rest of the breakfast crew) I ate twice as much, leaving less food for all the others, making them work harder and also look bad, and they'd have to clean that many more dishes. Ha! I showed them.

As we were checking out they told us we'd get a special 'rick steves discount' if we paid in cash. We were all for that discount, but seeing that it was the end of our trip, we were budgeting to run out of cash on the last day, which was this day, this very evening. We made a quick trip over to the local neighborhood ATM machine. It seems like the transaction would be easy, but NOPE. It didn't want to take my atm card, so I had to run over to another place and use my credit card. We finally got out of the hotel around noon. Poor waisted morning.

This day was a free-day for us. We'd already done all the big important things that we'd planned out, so today we were looking for new adventurous things. But first in preparation for leaving the country, we went to find a cheaper place closer to the train station. As we did that I noticed people making-out all over the place. Not as bad as Paris, but still pretty bad. After we arranged to go to our obscure airport in the early morning, we hopped back into tourist mode.

First on the agenda was One more picture of the Colosseum for Ryan. He really just wanted one more for some reason. I guess the three other times we stopped by there, he just didn't get the exact angle he wanted. It worked out cause it was the first in a line of nearby sites to stop by. We also stopped by the Circus-Maximus ruins, and the Mouth of Truth, and stuff like that.

One place we ended up after a little game of 'getting to know the buses' was Castle Angelo. Its the Place where the Pope will take refuge if the Vatican is ever attacked, and where the old popes are buried. The only cool thing about this place were the views from the top. This was to be the last Euro-Adventure-Climb that we would make. We had hiked to the top of so many places.

We went back to the Pantheon for a late lunch. At this point in our trip we were all worn out, but were dedicated to finishing with honor. We all were going so slow. after lunch we passed a bunch of stores that reminded us to get more souvenirs for others. This took forever. Ryan wanted more ties, then Jeff wanted shoes, and Jim wanted more chocolate; then Ryan wanted a suit, then Jeff wanted another pair of shoes, and on and on and on. I was so bored with watching them think about getting stuff, or trying crap on. It became physically painful by the end. I thought that Ryan was worse than a girl with shopping (don't get me wrong, its OK if girls do that, but this was Ryan!) Ryan would go through each tie on the rack, just like Jeff would go through each croissant in a bakery.

Hours later we switched our bags to our new hotel. We soon noticed why the new place was so cheap. Not the greatest place one could find, thats for sure. We wandered around a little more, but we knew it was time to say our last good byes. We had dinner at a McDonald's. On the walk back to our place, it was like walking through TJ at night, Scary. I left McD's earlier than the others. Everyone there was smoking, and it was killing me (literally) and Ryan was enthralled with checking out 13 year old girls, Jeff didn't trust him alone so remained with him, so I just left and met the others back at the flat, followed by a short night's sleep....