Sure. Spanish is also a good choice. I could have went on and on enumerating interesting languages and interesting reasons to learn them (like reading history, philosophy, or great literature in their original form).

As for your second point, as far as I know, Romanian's ties to Latin aren't only reasonably strong; Romanian is actually the most like-Latin language that is still spoken -- however, Spanish and French still sound horrible to me (and I took French for 11 years, in school).

Also -- and I just couldn't resist making this point -- do you really think that the French or the Italians are ever going to do something interesting enough to warrant learning their language? -- please note that I'm not saying anything bad about their past (that's awesome); but, if you're forward thinking, I think you're pretty safe assuming that they're glory days are (long) over.