HONEYMOON Honeymoon, Part 6: Happy New Year!31 December 2009 Happy New Year!We're just spending some time in our hotel room before we go out and celebrate Roman New Year (as I like to call it). The cool part of this is that we got to call our families at Australian New Year time. It's like two New Years in one! In a display of solidarity with the Australian revellers (or gluttony, maybe?) we have cracked open a bottle of wine and bought a bunch of chips, nuts and lollies which we've been grazing on for the last few hours. I'm going to have to summon every Chinese bone in my body (I like to think that now that I'm a Teh I have Asian heritage) to assist me in soldiering on through the thousand-course dinner we have booked for a few hours time.So yes, we're in Rome, and have been for a few days now. We're staying at the Hotel del Corso, which is right on Via del Corso, one of the main streets in the heart of Rome. The great thing about this is that we walk out the front door and straight into the city. The bad thing (especially for Jamie) is the crowds. Here is a picture of the current view from our window (about 6pm on New Year's Eve) - it's very mild right now. Usually we have to squeeze our way through massive crowds outside.So apart from the usual eating and drinking..Us eating gelati in the middle of a European Winter night. Idiots....we have been doing a bit of sightseeing and shopping. We went to the Colosseum...This was a couple of days ago. It was very rainy and we were cold and wet, and our tour guide was a sexist moron. If I was in the picture I would be frowning.and the Vatican...This was today. As you can see, the weather was spectacular. We didn't have a tour guide. Much better.and the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele."I can feel the lion's toenails!"We also discovered that there are a number of Braille maps here in Rome - very cool! (Jamie: Unfortunately, I'm still struggling to read them but hey - they're cool anyway.)We haven't bought much for ourselves over here (apart from the tonnes of food and alcohol we've consumed) but we did decide to treat ourselves to some leather jackets."God I'm beautiful!"They were a bargain at 99 Euro each, and they are made of lamb's leather which I presume is better because the animal it came from is cuter than a cow.We're here for the next 2 nights, then we go to Florence for 2 days then onto Cork, Ireland. Apparently we both have ancestors from there - hopefully not the same ones...That's about all I have to say, but here are a few more pictures that we (ok, I) have taken over the last few days:One of the better street mimes (the guy in front of the bin, not the guy on the left...)Wine in a poppa! Where was this throughout my primary schooling?!Jamie posing surreptitiously in front of someone's apartment building in Venice.A close up in front of the same building.Love to you all! We're off to eat ourselves into a coma!