Alert: Transito Banditos!

Rome - The Coliseum
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Well, our trip started out well. We were held up in Vancouver for 2 hours longer than expected as we waited for our airline to get sorted out, then we sat another hour in Calgary...this did not help instill confidence for our overnight flight to London. What further reduced our confidence was that neither of our reading lights worked, our "call attendant' button was constantly on (buzzing from time to time due to a short circuit), and dinner wasn't

served until midnight, but... other than that the flight was smooth.

Rome - The Vatican
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We arrived in London a few hours late and trained into the city to meet up with Matt and Cora (a couple of friends Matt was lucky to meet while on his trip throughout Asia). Being experienced travelers themselves, they were very patient with our late arrival and Matt took us out for drinks at "Hornimans" Pub on the river near his work. This location offered us a riverside view of both the London and Tower bridge. It was a beautiful day out and it took Alisa only about 5 minutes before expressing that she could live in London. Love at first sight. After our happy hour, we took a black cab to an East London Pakistani restaurant (delicious food), returned to Matt and Cora's house (which again Alisa fell in love with) and had a few quick drinks in their garden and called it a night as we would be leaving for Rome the next morning.

Alisa throwing coins into Trevi fountain... we had a talk about the budget after this episode.
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Arriving in Rome our hostel turned out to be a bit of a Club Med! Not in the "glitz and glamour" sort of way but more of the "a lot of drunk people running around, swimming in the pool, listening to live music, etc..." sort of way. Not the hosteling experience Matt had expected. We had great Italian food that night and crashed. We set our in

the morning with the knowledge that Rome wasn't built in a day, but we would sure try and see as much of Rome as possible with the one

day we had there. We could go on about Rome for a paragraph or two but I'll just sum it up as it is a breath-taking city. As well, the attitude of the people was exactly what we thought it would be (although I only saw one Camaro which we thought was odd). Of course we spent a lot of time getting lost in many back streets as we tried to find all the sights we were looking for but after about 5 hours of walking in 30+ degrees, the Vatican, Trevi Fountain and the Coliseum stand out as our favorites.

Cape Town
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We're not certain if word has gotten out back home yet, but apparently there have been a couple of sightings of "Transito Banditos" in Rome lately and they actually look quite a bit like us! There is a perfectly good explanation for this...it was us! When we arrived in Rome we took the Metro into town and then jumped on the city bus towards our hostel. When going back into town we didn't know how to pay for the bus so we did as the Romans did and just jumped on the bus through one of the three doors and sat down thinking to ourselves that it was amazing that the transit system was subsidized to the point that people only had to pay for the Metro. Not until we were on the rail train back to the airport did we recognize the fact that the Metro, the buses, and the airport trains were not under the same umbrella company and that we had been stow-aways on both train trips in and out of the city - and these were not particularly cheap! We really should have been buying bus/train tickets prior to boarding....Oops, our bad!

View of Tower Bridge from Pub
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Back on the right side of the law we caught our next few flights to Athens, Johannesberg then to Cape Town. The check in lady in Athens almost didn't let us continue on our flight through to South Africa - not because Roman "transit" officials were looking for us, but because we didn't have an onward or return flight from South Africa. Finally she decided we could go ahead and deal with customs in Johannesburg. This put a bit of a damper on our flight into Jo'berg as we spent the night hatching a well rehearsed excuse for South African officials which included Alisa begging and Matt sobbing. Neither were needed. A small white lie allowed us through with customs with no problems. We finally arrived in Cape Town after four flights (two red eyes), about 16 hours sleep in the past 5 days and are ready to see Africa....but not after a REALLY good sleep.

Gracious Hosts - Matt and Cora
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We have attached a couple pictures of Cape Town on this blog. We will speak about Cape Town next time...