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Krystal's Travels
I finally got pretty much everything packed up and ready to move out. Kali came over to help me take stuff to Beth's so we wouldn't have to worry about it when I got back. Then she came with Beth and me to the train station. We had a little trouble with the tickets. I thought that the train at 9:50 was a regional train but apparently I was wrong. Luckily there was another one not long after. Of course when we got to Berlin we found out that the last train to the airport had already left. So we had to stay all night in the train station. We went to McDonalds for a quick snack and when they closed we went to the track to wait until the train came at 4:30. Beth slept while I watched a movie. I didn't want to fall asleep because I was afraid of leaving our stuff unattended. I wouldn't have been able to sleep on those benches anyway. I don't know how Beth was able to. Finally the train came and we got to the airport. Of course everybody else was headed to Rome it seemed too and we had to wait in line forever. I slept about half the way on the plane. Beth was out. The Alps were absolutely beautiful to fly over.
We got to Rome a little after 9:00 and then had to figure out how to get to our hostel. I had to get out my computer to get the directions. It took about 2 hours to get there. We had just missed the bus we needed and we had to wait another 40 minutes for the next one. Then we had to take the Metro almost the entire line and then a bus to the camping village. Of course when we got there our room wasn't ready yet so we had to wait another half hour. It was so hot and we had all of our luggage so we were a little annoyed. When we got in finally we cranked down the air conditioning and took a nice long nap.
After our nap, we went to the grocery store to pick up some breakfast food and Powerade (a definite essential). We were amazed by the store! I guess we've been in Germany too long. There was fresh fish and meat and a huge produce section. The eggplants were huge! If we had a kitchen I would have bought some to fry. Yum!
When we were done with that we headed out to do a little sightseeing to get ourselves acclimated to the city a little. It was already around 4:00 so most of the day was already gone. We found Piazza de Spagna and the Spanish Steps first. There's a fountain in front of it where people were filling up bottles of water. In Rome there are lots of small fountains and the water comes from springs so it's safe to drink. One our way up the Spanish Steps the string bracelet guys found us. They almost swarm you and start tying a string around your finger. Next thing you know you have a string bracelet tied around your finger and they want money for it. These guys wanted 10 Euro for something I didn't want! Finally Beth and I gave them each 3 Euro to get them to go away. Needless to say, we found another way back down. Apparently these guys are the most successful scam artists in the city. If you don't pay them they get really rude and insulting and people end up giving them money just to make them go away. We looked around at the top and took a few pictures before we headed back down. By then we were getting a little hungry so we looked for a restaurant. We finally found a place near the bottom of the hill so we ate there. I had some yummy eggplant parmesan. I had been craving it since I saw those huge eggplants in the store. It was quite tasty. After that we walked around some more. We saw a sign pointing to the Trevi Fountain and decided to head in that direction. Of course, then I saw Prada and we were off in the opposite direction. Apparently Beth and I are very good at finding the streets with the designer stores. Lucky for us, all the stores were closed so instead we just drooled in the windows wishing we had lots of money. Granted, we couldn't have even afforded to walk in the doors even if they were open. Maybe it was better that they were closed. We spent the rest of the evening doing that and headed back fairly early because we didn't want to have to navigate in the dark when we weren't quite sure how to get around. We had a map but neither of us are very good with maps. We got back and I was pretty much out as soon as my head hit the pillow. Beth said I was snoring already by the time she got out of the shower!
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