tonight is my first night ever in a hostel. my locker smells like fruit rollups, courtesy of whoever had it last, and apparently no one told the folks who run this place that you don't put a chunky girl on the top bunk. oh, the joys.

actually, i am just being my terribly witty self. it is pretty nice. i have the entire dorm to myself because people my age stay out all night and drink. it's great to be an old woman stuck in a young woman's body!

so, story of my trip so far. last night i got out of work at around 10:00 p.m. (um, i mean 22.00). went home and packed. set alarm to rise at 4:00 a.m. to turn boiler on. did. distinctly remember re-setting alarm for 5:00 before going back to sleep, despite being in a half-asleep stupor. after that, I don't know what happened. woke up at 6:40, had missed my bus to the airport. so i trotted off to the train station, which is 5 minutes from where i live. i took a train for about 2 hours to bologna, then changed trains for the remaining >3 hours to rome.

got here, checked into my hostel, dropped off stuff, went to the coliseum. i came out of the metro station and it was right across the street. incredible. it was absolutely amazing.

i didn't want to miss a thing, so i bought the audioguide. geez louise. could it have been any harder to follow? they give you a map and you're supposed to punch in the number when you're standing on the spot. it's the coliseum! how do you distinguish where you are from a map? it's like, "walk up to the column in the section of the ruins that looks ancient." "these are the seats from which the senators used to spit on poor people." where? where did they spit?? (i'm just kidding, they would never put that in an audioguide.)

frustrating, man. i couldn't even figure out which door they dragged the gladiators' bodies out of.

afterwards i checked out the arch of constantine, which is right outside, and then i went to the roman forum and il palatino. i enjoyed it so much that i altered my tentative plans for my future right then and there:

okay, boyfriend will move here and we'll have our kids and they'll be well-versed in italian and art history. and then i never have to go home!

then i thought about what boyfriend's reaction would be and realized how creepy i was being.

so sleepy. a dopo tutti!