Rome! Day 1

We arrive in FCO way early in the morning and take the train (12 euro! kinda expensive) to Roma Termini. We see lots of graffiti on the way. On the trains, even.
We take the subway straight to the Colosseum. Another 12 euro for entrance, but that was well worth it. I thought the Colosseum itself was not all that impressive, actually. I think it's even smaller than Stanford stadium. And apparently it's not very well preserved at all...people have been recycling it as building material ever since it was built until sometime in the 20th century. I was surprised at how deep it was, though: there's a very deep basement underneath the arena floor, and it houses lifts and pulleys for things that would come out of trap doors. We also saw Roman graffiti that spectators had carved into the stone (how did that go down? "I'm gonna tag this up; hand me my chisel, will you?"), which was pretty cool. Also there are lots of pigeons, and they walk around like they own the place.
From there, we continued to the Palatine hill and the Roman forum (the same ticket got us into there as well). Very pretty. Augustus had an impressive house. We caught a bit of a tour guide talking about their dining arrangement: there was one big room, flanked by side rooms, each of which had a fountain-like thing populated with exotic plants and birds. And apparently there's an ancient Roman cookbook that is purportedly rather interesting to read.
We saw some really pretty gardens, a cool fern fountain thing that had a stalactite fountain beneath it (water dripping outside => ferns, water dripping inside => cave structures), and lots and lots of small walls (ala Eddie Izzard). Also bits of intricately carved marble, just sitting around. Very decadent. And these columns that stand around unsupported. It would have been really cool to see when all of them were up. Also, without the context of steel construction, these marble structures must have seemed so light and airy.
From there, we discovered that Rome, out of any other city we've been to, has the most dangerous-feeling street crossings. Then we made our way to a turtle fountain (where, we think, all the other tourists must have had the same map that we did, because it was just a little fountain that some 3rd-party sculptor had decided to adorn with turtles), a restaurant where we had pasta and fish (came out to 36 euro), and a long stairway where we sat and watched cars go by. We saw the miniature 3-wheeled car that Jeremy Clarkson drove inside the BBC offices on Top Gear!
From there, we took the bus to the train station, but not before the ticket vending machine ate a 10 euro bill and 4 separate stores refused to change a 10 (3 of them said they only had a single 5...). We tried to follow the hostel map I printed out, but couldn't find any of the hostels on the map. And the hotels we did find were kinda sketchy. We ended up going to a 3-star hotel south of the train station called Hotel Montreal, 70 euro a night.
With the time lag, we fell asleep at 6pm. It's 1 am now, and I just woke up. I'm going to try to sleep again before the morning comes.