April 25
Rome

Anyway, there were tons of people, parades, political rallies, and polizia with submachine guns - a real party atmosphere. I don't want to trivialize the incredible sights and monuments in Rome, but we felt a little like Chevy Chase at the Grand Canyon in the movie Vacation. The Coliseum is huge, and old. The Trevi Fountain was a solid mass of humanity and contained enough coins to finance Kenya for three months. The Spanish Steps were mostly covered with Italian butts.

We did meet an interesting character on the Spanish Steps (which get their name, incidentally, from the adjacent Spanish embassy to the Vatican). A young, well-dressed man in a suit and a bow tie sat directly behind us on the steps. As we were trying to spot the apartment in which John Keats died (he ode me money), the odd man stroked Kathy's hair. I don't mean he accidentally brushed it; I mean he stroked it, deliberately. Kathy reacted like it was a moth or something. Then, even stranger, he stroked my hair! I looked back at him to see that, in addition to the bow tie, he wore a curious smile and his head tilted slightly as if he were petting an exotic animal at the zoo. Kathy freaked and moved down one Spanish step to get some distance. Bow Tie man moved also, three Spanish steps down from us, where he squeezed between two other tourists: a middle-aged man and woman who scooted over to make room. He sat politely with his hands in his lap for a few minutes, and then nonchalantly rested his head on the man's shoulder. The tourist jumped up and explained loudly in British English how such actions were "completely inappropriate behaviour." Bow Tie man never said a word. He just kept staring with that curious grin as if this were a social experiment he was conducting. It may well have been.

After a quick tour of an exhibit containing models of Da Vinci's clever machines, lunch was pizza, panini, and birre at the sidewalk pizzeria in the lovely Piazza del Popolo. And that was just the first half of the day…

That afternoon, we saw the rest of Rome. Well, not really. The Pantheon was closed for the holiday, which was disappointing. The Piazza Navona was pretty cool, filled with caricature artists, painters, and souvenir hawkers. To be honest, we left a lot of Roma unexplored by the Duttons, choosing instead to return to the hotel, take a long nap, have a delicious dinner (Kathy ordered "fried mushrooms" as an appetizer and we got a pan full of luscious, fresh porcinis, sautéed in olive oil which we piled on bruschetta and devoured), and generally rest up for tomorrow. The plan for our last day in Italy: visit another country!