Rome

Let me warn you: this past week I have done A LOT! I still cannot believe I haven't passed out from complete exhaustion. I have so much to catch up on so bear with me, I will try and keep this as interesting as possible. So Saturday morning I woke up very early to head over to the Orly Airport to fly out to Rome. I was nervous that something would go wrong with my flight (just my luck) so I got there around, 4 hours early. I was only allowed to check in two hours before. After a long boring wait I finally checked in and everything was smooth. I was so happy but of course by the time I get to the terminal I realize my flight has been delayed. No big deal, I get on my flight an hour later and make my way off to Rome! Once I got there I took an hour long shuttle into the actual city of Rome. The shuttle dropped me off at the train station, which was perfect because I was meeting Beth there. She had taken an overnight train from Nice. She got in around 20 minutes later. We were so happy to see each other and then ventured to find our hostel. The hostel was very close to the train station so Beth checked in to her room. Just a side note: Beth and Rydberg were only staying one night in the hostel so they got one room, and me and Caroline were staying two nights so we booked a separate (what we thought) private room. Beth's room was perfect it was a four bed dorm but the only people in it for the night was her and Rydberg. We ventured off a little bit after dropping off our luggage and found some gelato! I had my first real Italian gelato. I got banana with chunks of chocolate in it, it was absolutely delicious and I still haven't found anything like it yet. A few hours later Rydberg and Caroline came in from the airport shuttle to the train station. We met up with them and brought them to the hostel. Caroline checked us in and we went up stairs. We realized our room was actually a five person dorm and there were people sleeping in there with very dirty feet. This was NOT okay. We moved our stuff to the other girls rooms and decided to stay in that dorm for the night. After that exhaustion we headed out to find some where for dinner. We found this small place that taught us quickly that water cost's money in Italy...awesome right? I had my first Italian pizza which was great. Then we went over to find more gelato. The man working behind the counter was very nice and let us sample every flavor and put together his favorite combinations for us. He gave me chocolate, banana, and black cherry. He also thought I was Italian, at least I knew I was starting to fit in from the start. After gelato we were all exhausted from our traveling so we headed back to the hostel and went straight to bed.

When we woke up the next morning I had messages from my Mom saying she had got a new hotel room for me and Caroline. We packed up all our stuff and headed down the metro (they only have two lines in Rome, because the city is so old it is hard to modernize it) to the new hotel. We stayed at a place called the Hotel Condoti. It was very nice and a perfect location, right outside the Spanish Steps. We dropped off our luggage and then went exploring. Our first stop was the Vatican City. I really had no idea that this place was an actual soverign state of it's own! We learned that everything is really cheap there because they don't have to pay taxes to Italy. When we got there we saw the line was ridiculously long. It was the last Sunday of the month so admission was free. We (some people more than others) were conned into going on a 25 euro tour and get to cut in line. We waited there for a while nervous they were going to steal our money and run, but we ended up skipping the line and we did get to go in. Who know's if it was actually faster, but whatever. We explored the Vatican museum. The tour guide told us one really interesting story that stuck out to me. Michealangelo became temporarily blinded while he was painting the roof of the Sistine chapel from all the paint and fumes dripping into his eyes. There was one sculpture he absolutly loved during this time and he would come to the Vatican to just feel this statue for hours. The statue is in the museum now, it's just pretty interesting fact. The museum led us into the Sistine Chapel which was absolutly amazing. The celing and walls were so beautiful I tried to take as many pictures as I could but nothing could capture actually seeing it in real life. After that we went over to St. Peters Basilica and St. Peters Square. This is where the Pope comes out to make all his annoncements and sermons and what not. Then we walked around the pope cemetary/building thing. Kind of eerie but kind of neat. There were a bunch of people praying for the most recent pope that passed away. There were even security guards there protecting it. We were starving by this point so we found a stand and I had a pizzaesque sandwich, it wasn't great but it did the trick. Then we walked around and ran into the Castle Saint Angelo which was really pretty and we walked down Pont St. Angelo, a very beautiful bridge. Once we crossed over we stopped at another delicious gelato shop. We ventured over (getting lost a few times) to the Pantheon. It was cool, but a bummer becuase it was under construction so half of it was covered up. Then we walked over to the Trevi fountain and through our coins in. The fountain is unlike any I have seen before. It was huge and beautiful. We then went over to the Spanish steps and just sat for a little while. After all our tourist adventures we were so exhausted so the four of us went back to our hotel and fell took a nap. Around 6:30 Beth and Rydberg went to go meet up with Beth's friend, and me and Caroline got ready to meet up with Jori for dinner. After stressfully figuring out how to use the trams we finally made it to her. Even though I had seen her only two weeks ago it was cool seeing her in her Rome element. She took us to this amazing resturant (by far our favorite meal from the trip) called Tony's. Caroline got some noodle with salmon sauce dish and I got noodles with pesto sauce. So delicious and so typical Italian.After dinner Jori left us to go get some work done and me and Caroline headed to Campo de Fiori. We had the intentions of meeting up with the other girls and the intentions of going out but none of these things actually happened. We didn't want to go out just the two of us and we were really exhausted so what did we do? Take a picture, head home and call it a night! We both passed out right away and it was much needed sleep.

The next morning we woke up and Rydberg and Beth met us at the hotel. We were doing old Rome today. We started at the Colluseum. It was so cool! I didn't realize how big it was and how old it acutally was. It's incredible that something that big and intricit has survived so many years. We explored the colluseum then headed over to the ancient ruins. On our way we passed the original Arc de Triomph. The ancient ruins were cool, but they were hard to figure out what they used to be. It just kind of seemed like an junkyard of old stones (I mean that in the nicest way possible). After the ruins we met up with Beth's friend and she took us to a fixed price resturant for lunch. I had a pizza and then we followed it up with some gelato ( I hope you are starting to see a pattern). We had lunch and walked around in the Trastevere area (where dinner was with Jori). Then it started getting late so Caroline and I headed back to our hotel to get our stuff together. Then we all met up again at the train station. We hopped onto our 7:00 pm train to Florence. Things were going great as planned. We went into a 6 person compartment car (just the four of us) and closed the door to make sure no one came in. Suddenly these very large Germans knocked on the door and totally kicked us out. We didn't want to be in there with them anyways because they smelled so incredbily bad. We were left without a place to sit when suddenly we heard English behind us. Two guys just had the same problem as us so we all decided to sit in the food car together and play banagarams the entire train ride. Really it wasn't a bad trade off. Ciao for now up next: Florence!