Life in Rome

---

April 6, 2009
Today we woke up early again to get a start on the day. It was a good day, because I was warm all night and I woke up and had a HOT shower. Felt sooooo good! Good start to the day! We proceeded to get our train/bus tickets, which cost 2 Euro and then realized that we needed to buy a ticket for the shuttle to the airport tomorrow morning. After the ATM in the hostel didn’t work, I borrowed $ and was able to pay the 12 Euro for the ticket. Then we headed out on our 246 bus to go to the Coliseum. We went to a place nearby first to get a ticket that would cover the Roman forum, the Coliseum and another place…not sure what it was called. We wandered around in the Roman Forum place…I think that is what it was called…and then headed over to the Coliseum. AMAZING! That place is pretty big; the movie Gladiator makes it look a lot bigger than it really is, but now it is very run down and falling apart, which makes it look smaller as well. We were able to cut through probably the hour long line with our ticket we got at the other place. SO NICE! Seeing the Coliseum was probably one of the coolest parts of the trip. It was AMAZING! After the Coliseum, we went to find lunch. We found a place that did pizza and a Coca Cola Light for 6 euro and different variations off that, so we got that.
After lunch we wandered around and then went to see the Sistine Chapel. I just wanted to see the Chapel, but they make you buy a ticket for the Museum that you need to go through to get to the Chapel. That was kinda expensive, but worth it. When you get inside, you are not allowed to take pictures or to talk. Their were guards that were constantly SHHHHHHHHHing people and then racing after people who were taking pictures and basically tackling them. Good times.
We went to the Basilica because we had time to kill before dinner. We all went because it was free and we were there anyway. The Basilica is huge and beautiful….but creepy. Way too many popes on walls and such. Not my kinda thing. We all got through it, except Sydney. We waited for 2 hours and we still never found her. Her phone was dead and she didn’t have any of our numbers to call us. After 2 hours we gave up and went to dinner because we were starving. Then we got gelato and headed back to the camping hostel, thinking she would be there waiting. She wasn’t. It had only been four hours, but we had no idea what to do. We had no idea if she was hurt or with a friend or lost or anything. She had been acting very weird the last couple of days and it was hard to communicate with her and talk to her, so none of us knew what to do. We decided to talk to reception at the hostel and see what they had to say. Their last option was to call the police. They offered to do it for us, seeing that none of us spoke Italian. They called and they put out a search for her for all the officers on patrol. They told us to come back at midnight and to check again with them in case the police called them back. We came back and the police had nothing. At this point, we were thinking about what to do….We all had early flights in the morning and we couldn’t just leave her Rome by herself. Kathryn volunteered to stay and the rest of us decided to go about on our holiday. We packed up Sydney’s stuff and were all very frustrated and stressed because it was putting a damper on all our plans. Jake and Rachel were going to go to Romania by themselves and me and Sarah would go to Barcelona by ourselves and meet Geneva there. Out of nowhere, Sarah came running back to the tent because she met Sydney in the bathroom. Sydney found her way back SOMEHOW on the bus. Apparently, she wandered off, and DID NOT KNOW THE NAME OF OUR HOSTEL! She had no idea what train/bus to take and ended up finding and internet café and was going to get directions, but that is kinda hard when you don’t know the name of the hostel. Apparently she asked for directions….ya….right. She was gone for over 6 hours by herself and didn’t pay attention enough to find her way back to the hostel. SUPER STRESSFUL! In the end, it all worked out, and she somewhat apologized and now we are sitting in Barcelona in a pretty amazing hostel. Wow how time flies....

---