When in Rome...

I went to Rome for the weekend of February 21-25 with 17 other people in my program. It was not a trip organized through our program, so we borrowed guide books from our families and did research online to figure everything out. At first only about 6 of us were planning on going, but then when other people found out about it and how cheap the flights were (30 Euro), they decided to join us. That did make it a bit more difficult to coordinate the hostel and flights and buses and all that, but the more the merrier!!!

By the way, I am warning you now that this is a really long entry. Hopefully you are not in a rush and have some time to sit down and read this, because it might take a while. I figure I might as well put down as much as I can remember now so that I won’t forget about something important later. Sorry if I start to bore you, but there is just so much to say about Rome! It is a magnificent city, and by far the best place I have visited in Europe so far!!!

So we headed out Thursday night after class to the airport. We flew Ryanair because their flights are the cheapest you’ll find, but on the flip-side of that, their service and the flight itself was not exactly up to par, haha. The Ryanair planes are absolutely hilarious…they are bright yellow and blue inside, and there are advertisements all over the seat-backs and overhead storage bins, and not your normal ads you would see on a plane…they were always of alcohol and all the different types you could buy during the flight. They were especially promoting these things called Pocket Shots, which are little bags of tequila, rum, vodka, whiskey, etc. that contain about 2 shots are so in them…while looking at this ad I was thinking to myself how unpleasant it would be to take shots during a flight…that would definitely not go well with the bumps, my sensitive stomach, and motion sickness!!! The cabin was also burning hot and the supposed “air conditioner” only blew out hot air…which was even worse than no air at all. And if you were standing up when you weren’t supposed to, aka the fasten seatbelt sign was on, they would yell at you over the speakerphone instead of walking over and asking nicely for you to sit down…this happened to a few of our guys who got out of their seats to try and hit on some Italian chics, haha. And our landing at the Rome airport was quite interesting. We hit the ground really hard all the sudden, and then kind of bounced back up a little, and then the pilot slammed on the breaks until we got to the gate. The flight back was not quite as interesting as we were all very tired, but let’s just say that Ryanair will not be my first choice next time 

1 am Friday morning - We arrive in the center of Rome, after taking a 20 minute bus ride from the airport. It took us to the main train station, Termini, which was thankfully only a 10 minute walk from our hostel. Originally we had booked a different hostel online, but because of our big group, we got moved to another one. We were a little skeptical at first, but it turned out to be just fine. After checking in and getting everyone situated, we all got a wave of energy and wanted to explore the city. Of course by this time it was 2 am, which is when all the bars and restaurants close, so nothing was open. We ended up buying some snacks and drinks from a road-side vendor, these people are all over Rome, and taking them back to the hotel and hanging out until we all passed out.

Day 1 - Our first destination was the Colosseum, because that was the closest thing to us on the map. It was a beautiful day, really sunny and warm, and perfect for sight-seeing. I remember visiting it when I was 11 and we went on a Mediterranean cruise and stopped in Rome for a day. It is not a sight that you would ever forget, but this time I appreciated it a lot more. I took time to read about its history and learn about how the gladiators were slaves and had to fight against each other in order to stay alive, and this was a form of entertainment for the viewers. In the same area as the Colosseum we saw the Arc of Constantine and the Roman Forum. The Forum is where lots of remnants of the old Roman city still lay. Check out the pictures and you’ll see what I am talking about. This area was really huge and covered with old buildings, arches, columns, steps, etc. We checked it out for a while, and walked up all these stairs to the top-most part where we found fields of grass scattered with old rocks and ruins. There is hardly anywhere in Europe that you can walk or hang out on the grass. The parks and such here are nothing like those in the states, because they always block off the grassy part, maybe to preserve it. It was a real treat to see grass that wasn’t blocked off, so we took the opportunity to lie down in it and also frolick around through it…look at the pictures and you will see what I mean by frolick. After some fun frolicking that reminded us of our childhood, we carried on through the rest of the Forum. After this, we headed up more stairs to the Piazza de Campidoglio (see picture), which is where the capital buildings of Rome are. From here we checked out the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II (see pictures). This monument was built and dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II, I have no idea who he was, but the monument was huge and beautiful and you could see it from all over the city because it towered over everything else around it. Next to this we got some pictures with a true Roman, haha, not really, but one of the guys dressed up as one that you pay to take a picture with (see below). Then we explored the streets of Rome, looking for a place to eat lunch. The times for eating meals are different in Italy than in Spain. In Spain you usually have lunch from 2- 4, but in Italy it is from 12-3. By this time it was well after 3, so we had some trouble finding food, especially cheap food because we were in a very touristy area. We found a place where we had delicious bread and pasta, and then we headed over to the gelateria for some Italian-style ice cream. Our last touristy spot of the day was the Trevi Fountain. This fountain is amazing! During the day it is filled with tourists eating gelato and taking pictures, and at night it is a very romantic scene, but there is also a lot of PDA (Public Displays of Affection), which is not very fun to look at. The tradition at the fountain is to turn your back towards it and throw a coin over your shoulder into it, which means that someday you will come back to the fountain. But you can also make your own wish when you throw the coin in…I did it a few times, haha, maybe I will have a few wishes come true, haha! Believe it or not, these few things took up our whole day, so we headed back to the hostel for a little siesta (nap) before dinner. After a refreshing 45-minute power nap, we hit the town again. Our group split off and went to a few different restaurants. I went with a few others and we got big, delicious pizzas! My friend and I split one because they were so big, but these were the best we had the whole trip because they weren’t too greasy and they were fully loaded with ham, pepperoni, olives, peppers, cheese, mushrooms, and egg (I know the egg part sounds soooo weird, but it was actually the best topping!). Then we ended our night doing a little bar hopping, but we didn’t want to be out too late as there was much more that needed to be seen the next day!

Day 2 - Woke up kind of early and was in need of some serious Italian coffee. My friend Brittany and I walked down the street a little to find the cutest little coffee/pastry shop in all of Rome (which we went to the next two mornings after this). Those were the best cappuccinos I have had in Europe so far! Check out the picture below to see how big they were! By the way, I never really drank coffee a lot before coming to Europe, but they drink it here like it is water, so now I am kind of addicted. After a huge cup of coffee with two packets of sugar and a croissant (which are very popular for breakfast), we were ready to conquer the Vatican! Half of our group left at 7 am to see the Pope speak at the Vatican because they heard that he was going to speak at 8 am, but when we got there at noon, the Pope went right by us in his Pope-mobile (that is seriously what they call it) and took the stage in front of St. Peter’s Basilica to address the crowd. Basically, we got the good end of the stick on this one because we didn’t wake up early and we still got to see him! There were an exceptionally large amount of people there because supposedly it was a special event or something, I don’t know, but it was really cool to see it all. After a while, it got kind of repetitive and boring because we obviously had no idea what he was talking about, so we decided to head over to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. This museum was HUGE and filled with all types of paintings, sculptures, architecture, everything. You have to go through the whole museum in order to get to the Sistine Chapel, so we were there for a while, checking out different art while trying to make our way to the Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but the paintings were exquisite. You weren’t supposed to take pictures, but I snapped a few anyways and got yelled at by the guard (oops). They turned out a little blurry, but you can get the general idea of what they are (The Last Judgment and God creating Adam). After this we made our way to see the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica. Because the Pope was speaking in front of it earlier in the day, we had to wait until he was done and everyone and everything was cleared out of the area. The Basilica is beautiful: really big, high ceilings, windows, stained art, beautiful paintings, all that jazz. Unfortunately, my camera was running out of batteries at the time, so I didn’t get many good shots, but I won’t forget how amazing it was. Our last stop of the day was the Spanish Steps. This is a place where people like to go and hang out and relax. When we got there, we found a little café and bought cappuccinos and little dessert pastries and them took them to the steps to enjoy while people-watching. The stores in this area are all very ritzy- Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, Burberry, etc.- all designer names, so obviously a rich area. We stayed here until the sun set because it started to get pretty cold. We headed back to the hotel to meet up with the other groups, and then we all went to this awesome Italian restaurant. Someone in our group had reserved two big tables for us earlier in the day, so we all got to sit together and enjoy some amazing Italian food. We had bread, wine, pasta, pizza, and tiramisu…it was an absolute feast, and totally worth every bite! After eating so much we were all in a total food coma and it was pretty late by that time, so we headed back to the hotel. 10 people in our group had flights back to Barcelona the next morning at like 6 am, so they wanted to go back in order to take a little “nap” before getting up again in like 3 hours to catch their flight. The other 7 of us, me included, were all in a room together, so we hung out for a while before hitting the sack.

Half way there! Haha

Day 3 - So over half of our group had gone back to Barcelona, so there were only 7 of us left. Once again, we started our day off with extra grande cappuccinos and pastries. The girls and boys split up because they hadn’t seen the Vatican, and we hadn’t seen some stuff that they had already seen. We took out our map and looked for pictures of important-looking buildings that we hadn’t been to yet, and headed out. We started off towards Palazzo Margherita, which upon arrival we realized was where the U.S. Embassy was (check out the pictures…American pride, haha). After this we passed back by the Spanish Steps that we had been at the night before, and I decided it would be fun to get a caricature done of me and my best friend here, Brittany. The guy did a really good job on me (at least that’s what everyone says), but we think he believes all blondes look alike, because even though my friend is blonde, she doesn’t really look like me that much, but in the caricature we look like twins, haha. But I love the picture…he drew a sign saying Roma and put the Colosseum in the background, and he gave us really hot bikini bodies (we wish we really looked like that!). I am definitely going to frame it when I get back to the states! So that was a fun little unplanned detour of the afternoon. Then we made it up to Villa Medici, a huge villa surrounded by gorgeous gardens and a big park. It is also on top of a hill, so we got a great view of all of Rome from up there. Then we headed down the hill to Piazza del Popolo. This was one of my favorite spots of the whole day, because we sat in this huge plaza for 2 hours just basking under the sun (it was a beautiful day - warm and sunny), doing some sunbathing, eating pizza, and of course, people watching. Here we also randomly saw the boys from our group. Because it was Sunday, everything at the Vatican was supposedly closed…they got to go into the Basilica, but not the museum or the Sistine Chapel. From here we made our way over to the Fiume Trevere (the river) and walked down it towards Castel Sant Angelo (an old castle) and Piazza Navaro (where we wanted to find a café for coffee and canolis, aka little Italian desserts). This plaza was cool too, but much smaller than the other one, and much more expensive. All the little restaurants were trying to sell us canolis for 11 Euro!!! Finally some guy helped us out and told us to go right around the corner where we could find them for 2 Euro. Thanks to him we saved a lot of money, but we were willing to get canolis no matter what, because you can only find them in Italy, and we were running out of days to have them! Right next to the Plaza was the Pantheon. By this time it was dark out, which made the Pantheon look really cool, but because it was late on Sunday night, it was not open to go into. Thank goodness we figured out which bus to take back to our hostel, because the bus stop was right next to the Pantheon, and we were really far away from our hostel. You supposedly have to pay like 1 Euro for the bus, but NO ONE pays, and the people that drive them don’t care, so everyone just hops on and it is like a free ride around the city. The buses are the main transportation in Rome…they are all over and always packed with people. The metro is not big there like it is here. They only have 2 metro lines through the whole city, so we only used it a few times, where as we used the bus everyday…but most of the touristy things were in walking distance, so it was never a problem to get anywhere. We met the boys back at the hotel, and then headed to Campo de Fiore, another little plaza where lots of people around our age usually go for dinner and drinks. At midnight, one of the boys with us turned 21, so we stayed out after dinner and celebrated with him. The age 21 really means nothing to people here considering you only have to be 18 to drink legally, but we still had to celebrate with him as if he were in the states…it was a really fun night!

Day 4 - Our last day in Rome! We had basically seen everything worth seeing in the city, so we decided to take a bus and venture out a little. In our guide book, we found something right outside the city called “Catacombs of Rome” and decided to check it out. We had to take the metro and then get on a bus, which dropped us off on the side of this deserted road, with only one sign pointing up the street and saying “Catacombs.” We walked a ways up the street only to find that all the catacombs were closed. They closed from noon to 2:30ish and it was 1pm, so we just started walking around the little city. We saw some old villas, churches, a mausoleum, and lots of sheep, haha! It was a cute town and a nice way to get out of the bustling city and just relax. We went back to one of the catacombs at 2:30, but the next tour in English wasn’t until 3:00, which wouldn’t have given us enough time to get to the bus station in order to go to the airport. So basically we went out there to see some catacombs and didn’t get to, but it was still a fun afternoon! The whole journey to the airport and back to Barcelona was long and kind of boring. Everyone was so tired from the weekend and we were all out of it. We made it back just in time to catch the last metro home, and then I passed out as soon as I hit the pillow.

Rome was absolutely amazing and I advise everyone to go there at least once in their life! There is so much to see and so much interesting history to learn about which was fascinating! And the food and wine is to die for!!! I was in heaven every meal!

Ciao for now!

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