to Rome. It seemed strange to have them serve little cans of bottled water with your dinner but apparently it is the only safe way. One thing I did learn in Europe-principally in France and Italy—and that is that they don't serve anything cold. They think it rots your stomach or something so I was always stuck with warm coke and Dick with warm beer. I can assure you that when you are thirsty either of these two drinks WARM is pretty awful. So if you travel learn the words for ice in all languages.
July 8. Today we "did" Rome by way of a morning and afternoon bus tour to Coliseum, Forum, Vatican City and misc. churches etc. The traffic is wild and the bus drivers cussing out other drivers in voluble Italian is something to hear. Visited American Express for mail and found long lines of young people waiting. Seems that half of young America was in Europe this year. Everywhere you went it was the same various hippy and semi hippy types all around.
July 9. We took a bus trip from 7 a.m. to about midnight down to Naples, Pompeii, Serrento and way points. Most of the tour was a bap- tist church group on the way to the Holy Land. Dick and I found our- selves sitting with the minister and tour leader at lunch and he and I got going on science and religion etc. We had dinner on return trip and again sat at the table, and on the way back to Rome we continued our conversation by sitting in the same seat on the bus. We had a very interesting time with neither of us believing or persuading the other but it kept us awake on the long trip back. Several times during the day I had gotten the conversation around to appropriate biblical quota- tions like the famous one in Deuderonomy about wearing opposite clothes. And I'd discussed sex vs. gender with him etc. Then as we were just a few blocks for his hotel I took over the conversation and dropped the facts of my life in his lap. It was really funny watching him looking first at the door knowing he had to get off and then at me wanting to stay and ask a lot of questions. He was really frustrated and I'll bet he didn't get much sleep that night. Something of a dirty trick but I had to "make waves" according to my philosophy. I dared not do it early in the trip lest he blow his top. But the visit to Pompeii was fascinating—took me back to my high school Latin class it must have really been quite a place before old Vesuvious blew its mind.
July 10. Took the Rapido train to Florence. This was by far the best train I've been on in a long time, certainly superior to any remaining in this country or in England. Satisfied a childhood dream too. On this train the observation car is up front. The engineer sits up high in
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