Grand European Adventure: Rome, Italy

I finally have some free, unlimited access to the internet without feeling like a million people need to use it, and I'm waiting for a little bit, so I think I can finally update this...at least a little.

The grand adventure started off on Sunday, March 16th. I made it to Stansted airport without any major mishaps, just a lot of time to kill. Per usual, I was way to early for my bus from London Victoria to the airport, so I spent a lot of time waiting around in the cold trainstation. And then once I got to the airport at 11:45, I waiting around in the cold airport for 6 hours before my flight. I have never before seen so many people sleeping in an airport! I guess the Europeans do it a lot and are pros at it because I saw people with sleeping bags, with pillows...even a guy with a blow up mattress! I was impressed, and definitely not as comfortable. After a long wait, with some brief dozing, I finally made it on the plane, crashed there for 2 hours and got into Rome easily enough. Felicia and I had agreed upon this place in the Termini train station to meet (since we were coming from different airports), but when I got to Termini, the place was not there. Serendipitously, though, as I was wandering through the trainstation, I found Felicia! It was a happy reunion, and I was so glad to see her. It was very weird to be in a country where they don't speak English, and I have new found respect for people who study abroad in countries where they are not fluent in the language. All the people speaking Italian intimidated me! (But I got over it, very quickly). Anyway, FAB and I made our way to the hostel, dropped off our stuff, and headed out.

Our first plan was to get to find lunch and get to the Spanish Steps to eat it and plan out our trip. However, the streets of Rome are frustratingly confusing and it took us a very long time to get to where we wanted. Eventually when we did get there, a crabby policewoman told us that we weren't allowed to eat on the steps. Which I thought was silly. But whatever, we walked 2 feet away from the steps, finished our lunch standing up and then went back to our seats. After we enjoyed the sun for a while, we continued to explore...A LOT. We hit up the Pantheon, the Trevi, Villa Borghese, Piazza Navona and everything in between. We decided we would return to the Trevi sometime during the day when it would hopefully be less crowded and so that we could toss the coin and take pictures. The day ended with our first gelator (nutella, chocolate and hazelnut, yummy) and back to the hostel to CRASH.

The next day, the 18th, was another whirlwind walking tour of the city. We first went to Santa Maria Vittoria to see Bernini's Santa Teresa in Ecstasy statue. Pretty church and pretty statue. We then walked over to the Cappuchin Crypts to see the decoratively built mounds of monk bones. It was both creepy and incredibly cool at the same time. You werent allowed to take pictures, which was a bummer, so I bought a postcard to commemorate the occasion. Afterwards, we walked back to the Trevi fountain to toss coins in and take pictures since the ones at night didn't exactly turn out well. From the Trevi we would lunch at a deli counter in an Italian grocery store and it was delicious...ham and cheese on bread...what more could you want? We walked through Piazza della Repubblica, down to Santa Maria Maggiore which was HUGE and where Bernini is buried. We crossed over the "Sacred Area" (a large set of ruins which is now inhabited by a bunch of cats), down into Trastavere. We spend a while wandering around to find a restaurant Vicky recommended. I think we found it, but I'm not sure, there were a lot of restaurants in that area with essentially the same exact name. I had spaghetti carbonara which was good but I'm not sure I would eat it a lot. It was very rich and I'm not a huge fan of bacon. Then we had gelato at a Vicky/Rick Steves (A god among men) recommended place and it was amazing. Pistacchio and cinnamon, who would have thought it? We made our way through Campo di Fiori and crashed in bed again.

On Wednesday, Felicia and I had planned to go to the Vatican in the morning, but it was closed for some Holy Wednesday thing, so we had to replan. Instead we decided to walk down to Trastavere again and go into this park. We were trying to find this monument that apparently had a great view of Rome in it, but we could not, for the life of us find it. But we got somewhat of view and enjoyed the sunshine in the park. Around noon, Felicia went to check out the synagogue and I met up with Matt and Steve at the hostel, who had just arrived from Barcelona. It was wonderful to see them again- after spending every dinner with them for the past couple of months, I had definitely missed them a lot. We grabbed lunch and then met up with Felicia outside of the Colesseum.We went into Palatine Hill, The Forum and the big arena. All incredibly impressive. I really liked the Forum (mostly thanks to the information from my savior, Rick Steves) for all of its history and fun facts- and I liked the Colessuem just because it was large and historical and because I love "Gladiator" (lame, I know). We popped back to the hostel for a little nap and went in search of dinner. We wanted to go towards the Trevi Fountain, got lost, but found a great little restaurant on the way (Abruzzis, maybe? I dont know). It was amazing, so it didn't even matter that we were lost. Eventually we did make it to the fountain, took some beautiful night pictures with Matt's camera and got gelato at another RS recommendation.

The next morning we woke up early and got on the metro to Vatican city. I guess I'm just used to the London Tube which is fairly clean, so I was surprised to see all the grafitti on the train, and it was packed full of people going to work. But it was fast and efficient and got us to the Vatican in short time. We had wanted to go to the museum first, but stupid me just followed the mass of people going into the Basilica for mass. Eventually we got in line for the musuem and it was ridiculously long. After about 90 minutes, we made it inside and were excited to find that we could get a student discount for 8 euro instead of 14. The museum was huge and impressive (kind of a theme for Rome) and the Sistene chapel was as beautiful as they say. We sat there for a while to take it all in (and because we were tired), We got out of the musem and ran through a downpour to get lunch (damn the rain in Italy!) and made our way back to the Basilica once it stopped pouring. Luckily, when we were in line, we heard this priest talking to this American family (later we found out that his mother knows the wife's mother), giving them a tour. We listened in and asked the family if they minded if we could continue to do so and they said of course, which was amazing. The priest was studying at the North American Seminary in Rome and knew so much about the chuch, which made St. Peter's so much more interesting than it probably would have been on our own. Probably the highlight of the trip. We left Vatican city bought our train tickets to Florence, went back to the hostel, headed back to Trastavere for dinner. It was okay, but definitely not as good as the night before. Gelato and baked goods for dessert (per usual), and went home. Got up at 8 the next day, breakfast and train by 10, goodbye to Felicia and on our way to Florence! I love trains. The Eurostar trains are super fast and very comfortable.

Reflection on Rome: Beautiful, ancient, wonderful. Frustrating because of the streets and our ability to get completely lost and too much to do with not enough time. Food was good, gelato was fantastic. People at the hostel were nice and it was in a great location, but the cleanliness was a little dubious and it was too lound and way too cramped. But we didn't spend too much time there, so it was okay. All in all, it was a great little Roman holiday and a fabulous way to start off my Grand European Adventure.

Other cities will be updated at a later time, with pictures to follow much much later. Ciao! (Or I suppose au revoir since I'm now in France!)