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Did as the Romans did! (sorry this one’s a little long and has a lot of spelling issues)
Yes, this past weekend I was truly in Rome and it was as great as I had imagined it would be. Let me begin my blog by first describing the overnight train ride. I found this very exciting, what isn’t super cool about sleeping on a train! There are several rooms within each car of the train, each containing 6 beds. The rooms are tiny and the beds were small but so am I so this really was no bother to me. In one room slept the two camp A friends I was traveling and I plus another nice young lady and of course two very bossy elderly Italian women. Upon entering the tiny room they shared a meal of green beans, bread, and nasty smelling fish. Since we are kind we let them have the bottom bunks and it was then as we were trying to go to sleep we realized how crazy these women were. They refused to let us stand in the hall even though it was stuffy and hot because of any boy that might walk by AND woke one of my friends up in the night by touching her on the back of the neck (which caused her to scream and almost die of a panic attack) because she needed her to help her to the restroom.
Another interesting thing about the train ride was that it went through Sicily on land and then drove onto a fairy (spelling?) and then the fairy took the giant train across the sea until we hit land again and then drove off the fairy and took us to Rome. Roughly ten hours is what it took us to go one way.
The first thing we did when we got to Rome was have Cappuccinos and pastries but this was only to break our Euro into change so that we could PAY TO GO TO THE BATHROOM! Major Suck! I didn’t want to get all political but it seems strange that there is all this beautiful art work that everyone has the right to see and touch but a person must work hard for money in order to pee in a respectable place, God bless the USA!
We then took the Metro (kinda like the subway) to the street which our hostel was on and checked in. It was decent. It had about 8 beds per room. The bathrooms were private, our backpacks could be locked up, and everyone spoke English so we were happy.
We then set out to begin our sightseeing. We paid to have an English tour of the Vatican because Catholic me was totally stoked to see the Vatican! We saw tons of famous art work, stood above the archives which hold all of the important top secret Catholic documents and of course all of the penises from the statues because of a pope who thought the art work was too naughty and ordered all of them to be removed. We also saw the Sistine Chapel and St. Peters Basilica which as you can imagine was huge and beautiful.
Next we had a classic Italian lunch of pizza and pastries. I of course ordered an Espresso.
We then saw Venice Square which is basically a multi cultural center with big white steps and lots of statues, followed by the Coliseum which we paid for a tour of so I have all kinds of interesting facts which I will be happy to tell you about if you ask. The info I found most interesting was that they kept the animals and humans that were used for entertainment in the same cages, not cleaning them out between uses. So one night an elephant might be in a cage and the next night a prisoner of war, slave, etc might be in it. This made the animals a lot crazier when the fighting began because of the scent. They would also burn and drug animals to make events more interesting. We then experienced the Roman Forum which was the hub that controlled all of Europe when the Romans were running things. These ruins were fascinating. After this we saw a few more things like the circus Massimo where all of the chariot races were held and then spent a good long chunk of time searching for the Trevi Fountain. Don’t worry I have a picture of me throwing my coin in! It was amazing and one of the biggest highlights of our day, LOVED IT!!! It was packed which was unfortunate but still beautiful.
Then we had supper, thinking of my boy friend and how I wished he was with me in Rome I had a tomato and BACON pasta dish with lemon soda and a little later we had gelato and did some souvenir shopping. Our goal had been to see the Trevi during the day light (to get good pics) and during the evening because apparently its way prettier at night, whoever says that is right because we saw it and it was great!
By this time it was pretty late, the metro and our hop on hop off bus had both closed down for the night so we had to start the long walk back to the hostel which was A O K because Rome never sleeps, people are out at all hours and we saw some really cool stuff on our way home such as the Spanish steps and this really cool fountain area where a guy was playing the saxophone. We got back to our home for the night and then Brittani and I wanted to find some night life. Well there wasn’t any but guess what there was? Underground donut shops filled with people and of course tasty treats. So we got some and sat on a bench and ate them. It was lovely! Sleeping in a hostel was just fine, some boys woke us up pretty late but it was only for a few minutes, after walking the streets of Rome all day I was pretty tired and it didn’t really matter.
On Sunday morning I woke up Extra Extra early to go over to St Peters Basilica so that I could attend mass for the first time since I left, not going to church has been pretty odd and difficult for me. I had trouble finding my way in to this extreme structure but I found two nice sisters (nuns) who were also going in LATE just like me who helped me find my way. There were about 10 different masses taking place. So we picked one and sat down. There was definitely a dead pope in the alter that had clear glass and you could see him in his final resting place (oh yeah and for those wondering the Pope was on Vaca so he wasn’t at the Vatican while I was there). It was a small mass of about 15 people in my section in a mixture of English and Italian.
After this I found my way out of the church and of course called my Grammy right away even though for her it was 1 a.m. and it cost me about 20 euro. She was excited just like I knew she would be and I was so happy to get to share that with her. Then I found my friends once again. We did some more shopping and hopped on the metro to head back to our train which would take us to Sicily. I had Mc Donald’s at the airport before we left which was good especially the pistachio mc flurry, except for the fact that I had to pay for ketchup, sad story. On our long ride home we first sat with an American couple and the ladies mother who were trying to find their heritage and then some hilarious Sicilian people. It was a 17 year old girl and her mother they spoke very little English so we spent about 4 hours discussing what takes most people about 5 minutes to discuss. This was one of my favorite parts of my trip it was very entertaining to meet new people and attempt to communicate with them. The young woman’s name was Sharon, I got her number and she said we could go to the movies sometime!
We are trying to work out Pompeii, the Aeolianian Islands, Suracussa Sicily, Mt. Etna hiking, and zip lining for our remaining 5 weekends.
Adventures are Great,
Emmy
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