La Pennis De Pompeii

After our Vatican tour there was only just enough time to get back to the hotel, have a quick lay down and a few slices of what can only be described as the BEST pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life (or it could have been that I was starving and anything would have tasted good at that point.) and we were back on the bus ready for our second tour of the day

The Colosseum and some other Imperial highlights.  

The guide for this tour was dubbed "The Italian Speedy Gonzales" and he spoke in the same broken um er English as the last lady.  I reiterate that I am impressed with anyone who speaks more than one language, but is speaking it and making somebody understand it the same thing?  At least he was more enthusiastic about what he was saying.  He kept repeating himself as well, but not because of a translation faux pas, but because he thought we weren’t getting his jokes.  They just weren’t funny mate! He’d look around, lightly whack a few people on the arm as if to say “do you get it? do you get it?”.  He was also mildly racist telling a story about a “half negro” emperor in Rome - he was directly telling the only black people in our group and then did some tribal dance whilst singing “boo yeah! boo yeah!” and then said “so don’t worry,  even black people were in high positions back then.”  We all looked around concerned and embarrassed, but he just danced on to the next thing.  

He asked me where I was from and he hadn’t heard us speak or anything so he couldn’t have known anything. I told him we were from Australia and he looked me up and down and said “yes, I can tell.”  I asked what he meant and he replied “oh um.... relaxed, easy going and um, what more do you want?” and walked away - obviously that was the end of that conversation.  Strange, strange man!

He announced that we would be heading over to the Colosseum and we said “oh good” he stopped and said, “Unless you want something. What you want? You want drink? You want ice-cream? You can get ice cream, but you must hurry!!”  None of us wanted anything and were a little perplexed why he kept pushing food and beverage ideas on us.  Finally a couple of kids said they’d like an ice cream and popped into the shop and he chased them into the shop shouting, “You must hurry! You must hurry!  Come on, hurry, you must be quickly.”  Why oh why did he even suggest ice cream if it was going to be so unrelaxed!?  So more waiting around in the heat - 41 degrees!

As most of you know - I don't do heat well!  But I think Lu will agree that I was a real trooper the whole day.  I even surprised myself!

This man had an odd fascination with Russell Crowe and kept referring to him and the movie Gladiator and how RC was the only Gladiator (which couldn’t have been true)  Lu once asked me “is he talking fact or fairytale?”  I couldn’t answer!

But my favourite “What the?” moment of this tour was when he grouped us together just outside the Colosseum, next to the bins, to talk at us about completely unrelated things, he  turned to me and said, “Do you see that up there?” He was pointing to this.......

“Do you know what it is?” He asked.  I nodded, wondering where he was going with this.  “It’s a pennis!” He announced (prounouncing it like Dennis (the menace)) and then he laughed and slapped his thigh then added, “That is what you get in Pompeii!” 

??????

At the end of the tour he was asking everyone where they wanted to stop out of the designated stops they advertised.  We told him the name of our stop and he said, “No the bus won’t stop there.”  When we said, “But we were dropped there this morning and it’s in your brochure.....” He just walked away and didn’t tell the bus driver, so we negotiated with the driver to drop us off even closer to our hotel.  He restored our faith in the tourist industry worker.

So after a massivo day we stopped in the Piazza Della Rotonda for a well earned bevy and bruschetta whilst looking at the Pantheon and being entertained by a piano accordion player and some Brazilian acrobats who looked a lot like P.Diddy with buffer arms which has initiated “Rome's Got Talent” with us as the judges.

Stay Tuned.......