When in Rome...

There are moments in life that will be forever cemented in memory. One of these for me is having dinner with some of my tour group while sitting outside in a piazza in Rome. I had an excellent tortellini with prawns, split a bottle of italian red wine with the others at my table, and tartuffo for dessert. That moment, and a few others on the trip made all of those days in Afghanistan worth it. We walked towards the ancient part of the city, and there before us was the Coliseum. I always imagined the Coliseum to be out in the middle of a big grassy field, for some strange reason. On the contrary, it's surrounded by the contemporary city. Here gladiators once fought for their freedom or for fortune, Christians were fed to the Lions, and sometimes the lower part was filled with water to stage recreations of sea battles. Shortly after returning to our hotel, two of the girls in our tour group took the "when in Rome" concept to heart and appeared in the hallway dressed in togas. That's the spirit!

The following day, we toured the Vatican and saw countless works of art within its walls. In the afternoon, we split up and wandered about the city at our leisure. Knowing we would need dress pants for some of the upcoming events, Dave and I toured some of the clothing shops the city had to offer. We discovered that when an Italian tailor promises that your pants will be hemmed by 6pm, expect them to be ready no sooner than 7:30.

An interesting aside about the hotel we were in was there was a UNESCO group of students staying there for several months finishing their Masters degree. What made this interesting was there were both Israelis and Palestinians in this group. I ended up speaking with members of both groups, asking them how they got along. They said they were fine one on one, and in groups they just had to be careful about discussing religion or politics. "It's a start," I thought. If members of these groups someday end up occupying positions of influence in their respective governments, perhaps they can come a little closer to achieving peace in that part of the world. The next day, we were off to the birthplace of the Renaissance itself, Florence.