Rome if you want to, Rome around the world

Let's be honest. Most of my expectations for Roma came from The Lizzie McGuire Movie and Mary Kate and Ashley's When in Rome (Okay, with an awful lot of Eat, Pray, Love tossed in there. I've read it twice. Sue me). So, according to my experience, I could expect to be mistaken for an Italian pop superstar and live a fabulous double life around all of Rome's most famous monuments, save the fashion world with the help of the ingenuity of my twin and an assortment of friends with pleasantly diverse nationalities while partying on the beach, and pick up a dreamy Italian boy somewhere along the way.

Well, I actually imported  a boy from London, so that part was out. But the rest seamed feasible.

Now, I've been lucky enough to live in both London and Paris for a bit, and they are unique and wonderful and so rich and deep and in all the days I was there I didn't even scratch their glorious, gritty surfaces. I have a HUGE amount of loyalty to those cities (ironic, I know, since one is probably supposed to prefer one or the other).

BUT. 
ohhhh this might get me in trouble.
It's just.... I REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE ROME!

There is something so... effortlessly glorious in the way ruins pepper the landscape, lazily bathing in the afternoon sun, retreating under the wisteria if it gets too hot. It's like, "I'm Rome. I don't have to prove anything. I'm everything." And I'm like, "Woah, yeah. You totally are." (I really hope London and Paris aren't reading this. But hey, I'm American! Don't I have some sort of immunity here!?)

I mean, what's a girl to do when all the public drinking fountains look like this?

(London, for the record, doesn't have any. Not that I'm bitter... just dehydrated.)

And all the ceilings look like this?

And around every corner is a church that looks like this?

And the cars look like this?

And the houses look like this?

And the fountains make you look like this?

And you sit down to rest your throbbing feet and eat some multigrain Pringles and it just happens to look like this?

And the graffiti looks like this?

And the sun makes you feel like this?

And the statues look like this?

And all the buildings look like this?

And the pizza tastes like this?

And the women drive Vespas in stilettos like this?

And she can get a "Chicken Mythic Bacon" at McDonald's???

Don't judge. We're poor.

And they just know how to deal with chicken at the Chicken Hut!?

And her husband is this cute??

Well. 

I suppose all she can do is sigh and hope that that one euro cent in the Trevi fountain really does assure her a return to Rome. Maybe, hopefully, an extended one (?).

That, and she can go to Florence. 

Bummer. ;)