Roma, Italia

Hey!! This is the last blog from Italy!! If it's the first Italy blog you are reading, you should scroll down and read about Milan, Venice and Florence first!

Friday, Feb. 6 cont.
We had a very hard time finding this hostel because there was no sign anywhere in sight. When we finally did find it, boy were we in for a surprise!! Haha you just have to see the pictures - we walked through a huge wooden door and are welcomed by the smell of mold! - Yuck! Then we got into the hostel, and our "receptionist" was laying on a couch watching music videos. We were sooo confused when he asked us for 132 euros in cash!! After paying him, we put our stuff down and chose our bunks from the 8 beds available. We didn't have sheets - just a matress cover and a small blanket folded up. The paint or paper or whatever it was was falling from the ceiling...and the window was locked shut. We decided to try to relax by taking a shower in the three available bathrooms (one of which has a giant hole in the wall and another has its shower curtain ripped halfway off the pole) and we realized that we don't have towels. We asked him about it and he told us they were 2 euros each and if we wanted a tiny locker to lock up our valuables, he needed a 10 euros deposit....at this point we are HATING this hostel - especially compared to the other 3 cities!! But we finally got settled and met the Polish couple and the 50 year old man from Austrailia who were living in our room...Two beds were still vacant when we went to find something to eat for dinner. We ended up eating at Pizzeria Rocci where I had the absolute best pizza I have ever had in my entire life!!! (salami of course) The waiter did not speak English and ordering was absolutely hilarious - we made sure to leave him a good tip ;)

Sat. February 7
The two vacant beds were filled by two guys from Barcelona sometime during the middle of the night. We woke up early and headed to Piazza Venezia which holds Il Vittoriano, a monument dedicated to king Victor Emmanuel II. The view from the monument was amazing and we saw sooo many important things here (like the Palazzo (palace) Venezia which was used by Benito Mussolini as his headquarters, and he addressed the people from its balcony!) Then we went to the Pantheon! It was really amazing to see something sooo ancient! (125 AD) Until the 20th century, the Pantheon was the largest concrete structure in the world, and Michelangelo studied its dome before starting work on the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. It was used for so many things over time and now serves as an active church. A lot of famous people are buried here as well (including the artist Raphael and the first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II) After the Pantheon, we went to the Colosseum!! This was by far one of my favorite things we saw on our trip. We also went to the Foro Romano which holds the oldest and most important structures of the ancient city. It served as a city square and central hub where people gathered for justice and faith a reallllyy long time ago. We went to Palatino (Palatine Hill) as well and then headed to McDonalds for lunch. We were feeling pretty homesick for Spain as well as the US, and keep in mind that this was the very first time since January 3rd that I had eaten American fast food...We ended up wandering around some more and seeing the Teatro Marcello (ancient theatre built right before the Roman empire) before heading to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. We were allowed to use the kitchen in our hostel - so we cooked some box pasta and ate salad and pasta for dinner to save some money. Since McDonalds, I had not been feeling well at all, and the girls were planning on going on this famous barcrawl from the Spanish steps, so I went to the Pharmacy to find something to calm my stomach - BAD IDEA! haha They don't let you shop for your over the counter medication in Europe...when you go to a pharmacy, you have to talk to the pharmacists and they give you what you need. So here I am in an Italian pharmacy where very little English is spoken trying to tell them that I ate McDonalds for the first time in a month and my stomach was killing me. The guy who spoke the most english gave me a box of pink pills that said Ibuprofen on them....so I asked him if it was pain medication and he said yes...I told him I needed something for digestion to which he responded with a puzzled look....so I told him I ate too much McDonalds (haha) and he smiled and nodded and gave me a different box of pills which I paid for. He said I could take 3 a day (and of course I could not read the directions because they were only in Italian) - so I took one and laid down for an hour. It didn't help at all so I took another one and started to get ready to go out. By the time we were all leaving, I still didn't feel very good and we got about 10 minutes away from the hostel when I decided to turn around and come back. The pills ended up working as a LAXATIVE! and I had taken 2 - so you get the idea! I was stuck in this wierd hostel with the creepy owner and the old man from Australia because everyone else had gone to the barcrawl!! Haha when I think about it now it is pretty funny, but I was not happy then. I took a shower and laid down to read, and I fell asleep with the light on. I woke up to the old man standing a foot from my bed (I was on the top bunk so his head was level with mine) All I saw was his huge fluffy white beard and I screamed and jumped back haha - and he wanted to know if I wanted the light off?? I was so creeped out I couldn't go back to sleep until they all came home from the barcrawl...what a night!!

Sunday, Feb. 8
Dorothy went to meet her friend who was studying in Rome, so Heather and I went to the Piazza del Popolo, The Spanish Steps (The widest staircase in all of Europe - Beautiful!!!), the Villa Borghese (the largest public park in Rome), and the ZOO!!! The zoo was so cool because we were allowed to get so much closer to the animals than at home. They also had a lot of different animals than what we have at home. This was one of my favorite days because it was beautiful weather and we were so relaxed. We met Dorothy at the Fontana di Trevi (The largest Baroque fountain in Rome) The legend holds that if visitors throw a coin in the fountain, they are sure to return to Rome....and you better believe we threw a coin in that fountain! haha - About 3,000 euros are thrown into the fountain every day and are collected at night. The money goes to a supermarket for Rome's needy. Then we went to the grocery store and made chicken ceasar salad with penne pasta for lunch/dinner. Then we went for gelato (Yum!) and came back and had a long talk with the Barcelona guys about Spain and poetry and random things haha - We thought one of them didn't speak English very well - but he was just shy at first! When we asked them their ages, they told us they were 27 and 29 and then told us (in english) that men don't get old, they get interesting. I asked them what women get, and he said "No hablo ingles." (I don't speak English!) haha they were hilarious. It was realllly awkward for me and the old man since the previous night, but the girls loved him - he said we reminded him of his daughter - which I thought was creeepppyy! We went to bed early because of our busy day to come.

Monday, Feb. 9
We went to St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican!!! It was absolutely amazing. The dome of St. Peter's was designed by Michelangelo. We saw soo much famous art by Boticelli, Bernini, Raphael and Michelangelo. The Gallery of Maps was one of my favorite parts, as well as the Raphael rooms covered in his frescoes and of course the Sistine Chapel. We were there for the entire morning, and it was this day that I discovered my coffee addiction that has developed over the past month. I was almost falling over when we finally went for lunch and had really good pizza and potato and cheese rolls...haha we thought they were mozzerella sticks! Then we stumbled across an outdoor market and got the best nuts ever!! I don't even know what kind they were, but they had shells. We walked around the Trastavere neighborhood for hours. It was one of Rome's great medieval working-class neighborhoods that spoke its own distinct dialect and had traditional street fairs and poetry, but it became very touristy in the 1990s. We also went to Piazza Mattei/Santa Maria de Trastavere which, according to legend, had a stream of pure oil flow from the earth on the site of the church on the day Christ was born, signifying the coming of grace and God. There is a column next to the altar marking the spot - check it out in the pics! We walked back towards the river when it started getting dark and took a lot of night pictures!! We sat by an ice skating rink and people-watched for a while before going to meet Dorothy's friends in the Piazza Navona (Really pretty fountains) to go eat dinner. Dorothy's friend Kate and 6 of her friends came to eat dinner with us and Dorothy, Heather and I ended up getting appetizers AND a 2 course meal. We were so hungry and exhausted and we knew that it was our last night in Italy, so we ate every bite of it! haha - Then we got MORE gelato and crashed the minute we got back to the hostel.

Tuesday, Feb. 10
We woke up early and set out to find a good view of the city. We walked up to Aventine Hill and attempted to find the "keyhole" view of Rome in Piazza di Cavlierei di Malta. We didn't realize it was an ACTUAL keyhole in a door! haha We walked around some military base for like an hour looking for it - it was realllllly amazing though when we finally asked some guards where it was. And then it was time to get to the airport for our flight. It was such an amazing trip!! I hope you liked reading about it :)