So. Europe.

First, Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was cold, cold like you wouldn't believe. It averaged at about -15 celcius during the day, which levels out at about 5 1/2 degrees fahrenheit, which was the coldest it has gotten in the Netherlands for about 20 years. And, while my mother and our investors got to wear nice furry boots and thermal underwear, fleece pajama pants, and flannel-lined jeans, I as the rider was in my thin breeches, riding boots, and snowboarding jacket the entire time. Mom got to wear her down jacket that went down to her knees and big bulky gloves, while I was in my thin leather riding gloves.

Did I mention it was about 5 degrees?

Cold aside, it was definitely our most productive trip yet - I think I rode about thirty horses all told, and I picked out five or six that I really liked, and we chose two from the top of those who are in the process of getting their pre-purchase examinations to ensure they're healthy and uninjured. We're awaiting word on the gray gelding, Vegas, who was examined sometime yesterday.

We managed to take half-a-day after we concluded our business to wander around the city before we flew out, but even without the cold Amsterdam isn't really our thing - it's less a tourist city and more a party place than I would like. We did see the Anne Frank house, which was very fascinating but didn't fail to make me very sad. We had mexican food for lunch, which was interesting because they have their own interpretation - in this case, the salsa was very sweet, like fruit jelly or jam. It was too sweet for mom's taste, although I quite liked it.

Where Amsterdam was disappointing, Rome was absolutely a delight. For one, it was positively warm there, at least in comparison. It was bright and sunny and it probably helped that for the first time in the entire trip I got to wear my warm clothing, but aside from that the city was simply fun. The Italians do not speak a lot of English, which differs from Amsterdam where English is almost as prevalent as Dutch, but I found I didn't mind this because my basic understanding of Spanish and Latin served me very well - I could understand quite a lot more than I expected to, and it made me feel much more at ease.

Also, Rome is simply my kind of city. For years I contemplated archaeology as a career, and still would love to do so, and Rome has been called the biggest archaeological site in the world. We took tours of the Colosseum, the Palatines, the Christian catacombs and crypts, the Church of San Clemente's (a clear example of how the city is layered on top of itself), and the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which was seriously amazing. More about that later. We also saw the remains of the ancient city wall, the thermal baths, and various in-progress archaeological digs througout the city.

My favorite was San Clemente's, simply because it's utterly astonishing, and still boggles my mind almost a week later. The current San Clemente's Basilica was built some time in the 12th century. In the eighteen hundreds, the then priest of the church, Father Mullooly, heard rushing water beneath the church which allegedly kept him up at night. In frustration, he had workers start to dig beneath the church. The diggers broke through the ceiling of a second, nearly intact church beneath the main one, a fourth century church of the same name. The fourth century workers had filled the old church with pieces of stone and marble and sand and dirt, packing the rooms for support. The nineteenth century workers cleared out the rubble and reinforced the walls in order to support the top church, but they didn't find the source of the water.

Beneath the fourth century church was a second century church. Beneath the second century church was a first century pagan temple of mithrais. Beneath that was a early first century appartment complex.

We got to see all the levels, and let me tell you, I almost passed out from sheer disbelief. They showed us a tiny little hallway, about two feet wide, and told us it was an ancient alley way between two different buildings and sealed over to provide a floor for the building on top! The mithraic temple still had the original pagan altar there, carved with their version of Adam. There were ancient frescoes, painted like stories, with captions and dialogue. You could see the original collumns that held up the ceilings - mismatched because they were all stolen from other buildings!

Then we saw the other church, which was called The Church of the Immaculate Conception but was nicknamed 'the Bone Church' by locals because of the practice the monks had of putting each other's bones on the walls. The designs were astonishingly elaborate - flowers made of lower jawbones and stars made of vertebrae, with skulls jauntily sitting atop pillars of stacked femurs and ribs forming the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

Three of the four rooms had earthen floors, the dirt itself a very dark brown dirt a lot like clay, taken from the Holy Land itself. There were crosses on the floor, marking the spot where monks were buried. It was considered a huge honor to be buried in Holy Land, and with only three small rooms of the stuff, the monks had to take turns. Apparently, the newly dead would be buried until they were sufficiently decomposed, after which they were taken out and put on the walls, and the next ones put in.

The catacombs were very interesting also - most of the graves themselves had been sacked by barbarians looking for treasure, so most of the bodies were gone, but you could see chunks of original flooring and marble seals, and there were even a pair of sarcophogi with ancient bodies inside that we could see through the glass lids. The bodies themselves were nearly invisible - they looked like flakes of charcoal. I could see a fragment of tibia of one body, and the shape of the feet through the linen wrappings on the other.

I thought the city wall was amazing - you could see where repairs had been made throughout the thousands of years the wall has been standing. The oldest standing sections are made of huge blocks of dark gray stone, and other sections made of a different type of rock, smaller stones and lighter in color. It was like a puzzle, put together over hundreds of years by hundreds of different people.

The Colosseum was great too, although our tour guide was less than stellar. It was the first place we went to the morning after we arrived, and we got there early so we wandered around a bit before our tour was supposed to start, and made a very touristy mistake.

As we approached the Colosseum, we saw a group of costumed men standing around, dressed as Roman Gladiators. One of them approached us and asked if we wanted to take a picture, and we said okay and handed over our camera and smiled for the photo. Then they handed back the camera and the one guy - the ringleader, I suppose - asked for ten euros...each. That's like, 35 dollars. Mom was incredulous. "Twenty euros?" she asked in disbelief, and he nodded. "You're joking!" she said. "I'm not giving you twenty euros for that!" She started backing away, and Gladiator guy followed.

"Hey lady," he said. "This is a job. You have to pay. It's a job!"

"I don't even have twenty euros!" Mom lied. "I don't have it, I'm sorry."

"I'll give you change," Gladiator guy said.

"I don't have it."

"You have to pay. It's a job," Gladiator guy insisted.

"I'm not giving you twenty euros!" Mom said, walking away. Gladiator guy was still following us.

"Fine then, delete it. Delete the picture."

"Fine," I said in annoyance. "I'll delete it."

"No," Gladiator guy said. "I want to see. Do it now."

"No," I snapped, and took a large step backwards. Gladiator guy looked like he was contemplating grabbing me, but he evidently thought better of it, being surrounded by witnesses.

Later on, I decided that a pocket-sized can of pepper spray probably wouldn't be amiss, but we learned our lesson very quickly. One, don't accept kindness from Italians. Two, the only Italian men we met thought the world revolved around them, so we avoided them quite diligently. And three, don't be afraid to get rude - it is seriously the only way to get them to leave you alone, as we found out with the gladiators and a man selling roses at the Spanish Steps. I found out really quickly not to answer vocally, as they take it as misleading acceptance. "No thanks," doesn't work - they keep following you. The best way I found was to ignore them completely.

That was the only less-than-fabulous part of the trip, and was a actually very amusing later on, but Rome itself was beautiful and fascinating and I definitely, definitely want to go back.