On my first day in Rome, Eddie (one of April’s five housemates), numbered a map off of different places in Rome we needed to see.  There were churches, old ruins, basilicas, old shops, piazzas, etc: a total of 19 or 20 things.  Rome has so much to see.  The architecture is incredible and some of these buildings date back beyond the first century!  I feel like sometimes you can’t help but be a tourist in Rome.  There’s an area in Rome called Piazza del Popolo and it’s near the north end of the city.  Extending from that piazza are three main streets which have loads of shopping.  It’s really a girl’s heaven.  They have all the standard things like Gap, H&M, Fendi and even none standard things like Lush as well as traditional Italian shops that sell leather jackets or art or souvenirs.  It’s a place I normally wouldn’t go.  In fact, it’s a place that I would normally abhor but somehow Shazeen convinced me to walk through it.  Maybe because she promised we wouldn’t go into any of the stores.  I figured it would be OK.  To be honest, it wasn’t that bad but I think only because she actually kept her word and didn’t make me go into any of the stores.  To her credit, if we hadn’t walked through that area we would never have reached Piazza del Popolo and normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal (there are a ton of piazzas in Rome) but on this particular day there was a fireman’s exhibit at Piazza del Popolo.  They had cool fire trucks, simulated rescue scenes, helicopters, a ladder climbing show and an exhibit for the scuba rescue division!  I was in heaven...:P.  They even had a kid’s section where they’d let children shoot water from a hose on a smoking car or run an obstacle course.  And the highlight for every child was jumping off a platform onto a huge inflatable mattress.  The lineup for this was crazy!  At one point (photo above) a little girl was too scared to jump by herself.  The firemen manning the station tried their hardest to convince her it was safe but she wouldn’t jump.  After five minutes of this, the firemen got a little impatient and just threw the girl off.  I was like, “Oh my God!  That fireman is just tossing kids off that platform!”  And every time after that little girl, if any of the kids hesitated, the firemen would just toss them off without thinking twice about it.  I even got a video of it to prove I’m not lying.  Check it out here.  I think Europeans have a different standard of safety than North Americans.  And I think I like it.  Their firemen also have cooler gadgets and neater tools to use and high-tech trucks to drive.  Anyway, fire department is vingili di fuoco in Italian.  It’s pretty cool to say...even cooler to see.