David the Tour Guide

Talk about being a tourist. Today we saw almost all the main tourist places acting as the stereotypical American college students, but it was a great time and I'm glad to get those places out of the way so we don't feel guilty about leaving Rome and traveling next weekend.

Again, for the lazy ones, here's the highlights from today:

1. Coliseum
2. Roman Forum/Palentine Hill
3. Our tour guide David
4. Vittorio Emanuele Monument
5. Trevi Fountain at night

After a BBQ at our school, we headed over to the Coliseum. Immediately we were approached by and english speaking tourguide company because apparently we stick out as Americans very well still. My goal is to stop getting stopped on the street by fellow Americans because I blend in so well with Italian culture; I'm not there. Yet. I did buy a very cool Italian looking jacket, turns out its actually just from United Colors of Bennetton, but o well, it looks cool and turns out all the jackets I brought say something about UMD on them..oops. Can't believe I forgot my leather jacket at home. I managed to already break a button on the new jacket but thanks to my mom packing me and mini sewing kit I fixed it. #ThanksMom.

New jacket from United Colors of Benetton

The Coliseum is what it looks like. Big. Rocks. Circular. That's about it. Oh and I was there too.


The tour guide didn't add much to it either, somehow he made talking about gladiators seem boring. It's all okay, because what came next made us forget all about how boring that was. Across the street was the Palentine Hill and Roman Forum but more importantly, David the tour guide was also there.

Coupled with how bad our Coliseum tour guide was, David shined alone atop the pyramid of amazing tour guides. Incredible hair, captivating voice and enthusiastic passion were just some of his incredible guide traits that made him so great. Yes, we were fans of him. By the way, his mix of Australian and British accent left us amazed the whole time trying to figure his actual accent out, which only made his delivery style of constantly focusing us even better. He foreshadowed that we were about to walk up four flights of stairs, and made it sound exciting.

Roman Forum Ruins from Palentine Hill

The history of the Forum area was really neat, and there was so much to see. We'll definitely go back considering we got kicked out because they were closing around 4-5 when our tour with David had finally ended. He told us all the great spots to further check out though, what a great guy. We also want to sign up for his 3 hour tour of St Peters/Sistine Chapel/Vatican Museum. We can't wait.


We actually got to stand where Rumulus and Remus grew up and where Augustus lived (actually the same exact spot), hence Augustus claiming to be the second founder of Rome. It's a shame the Vatican stole all the beautiful marble that was at the Palentine Palace and Coliseum which makes those places look dumpy now, at least they made good use of it (St Peters Basilica), depending who you ask.

After that, we just wandered around Rome and saw the Vittorio Emmanuel II Monument (Wedding Cake), talk about an epic piece of architecture. Then stumbled upon Trevi Fountain at night accidentally. Only here can you accidentally stumble upon something that cool by accident. Get lost in Baltimore and you'll be lucky to stumble upon something that won't shoot you.


Anyways, it's about dinner time. Arreverderci