Advertisement
Published: February 27th 2007
Raining in Rome
Waiting in line for the vatican city14 wed - flight to Treviso Venice - night train to Rome 23.00 - 7.00
15 thur - Rome
16 Fri - Rome
17 sat - Rome to Florence train 07.52 - 10.30 night in Florence
18 sun - Florence train to Venice
19 mon - Venice
20 tue - Venice flight to London 22.15
The night before I left Ryan and I had a few drinks, so I’m blaming that on my massive over packing! ;-p anyway me and my massive backpack headed off to work at a bright an early 6.30am after an excruciatingly long 6hrs of work, I was off to catch the bus to Stansted airport, after arriving at what I thought was the right time the bus arrived and we were off to the airport, it was a bright and amazingly sunny day so not until the sun started going down did I start to think something may be wrong. Realizing too late that I hadn’t planned my bust trip quite as well as I should have, all that was left to do was pray that the bus took only 45 min instead of the 1hr 10min it was scheduled to take. After some rather
Raining in Rome
Waiting in line for the vatican city intense meditation I was thrilled to find out the bus arrived exactly in time for me to rush to the check in and get my bag onboard and walk to the boarding gate, I couldn’t have asked for better.
After a quick 1hr 45 min flight I was in Italy in the smallest airport I have ever seen! It’s pretty much a room where u pick up your luggage and a passport check.
I meet jade just out front and we jumped into a taxi she had waiting then straight (kinda in a backwards one way street kind of way) to the train station where after a bit of a wait we jumped on to an overnight train to Rome. After finding the right train and validating (time stamp) out ticket we climbed on and found a mostly empty room with an Italian girl who we found out was studying to become a doctor!
At the next stop we had another local come join us and showed us how the seats in the train moved into beds, which I thought was great as it was 11.30pm and I was quite happy to sleep… sadly it was short lived as 2
more people squeezed in to the room and I had to squeeze into a corner until 2 of them got of 3hrs later!! Jade however was lucky enough to be totally passed out an unmovable=p. I think I should have tried that I seriously doubt they would have physically moved me lol.
We arrived in Rome at 6am, and after much walking around and searching for information we finally jumped on there version of the tube and headed for the Vatican city, as soon as we arrived it started pouring down with rain!! So being the resourceful (thank you mommy;-) person I am I got out the poncho that was conveniently in my bag and covered up me the backpack jades bag and the sleeping bag=)I did look a bit like the hunch back of Rome but it worked wonders, we also bought a cheap umbrella from some buskers. After a good 45 min waiting in the rain we finally got into the Vatican, and we were lucky enough to put all out bags into the storage area, so we didn’t have to lug them around the whole time we were in there.
The Vatican was amazing so much to
Vatican City
hall of statues see, so much history, in-fact it may have been a little too much about 3hrs into it both jade and I were starting to loose motivation. Yes I know that is totally shocking, and if I did it again I probably would have brought a picnic then carried on after but as it was we saw a huge amount and I enjoyed all of it. After the Vatican we were hungry and a little tired so we got sucked into a tourist trap restaurant and paid way too much for food that was good but nothing amazing. Feeling much better after a short rest and some food I decided it would be a good idea to walk around the Vatican! A great experience to be sure but not something I would do again with a massive backpack, luckily it had stopped raining, after much effort and a little strife we finally made it around and took a break in a local park. After that we walked down towards the front entrance of St. Peters, which was great quite a sight!
After that we headed down the street and found the castle and the markets in front, they were all run
Vatican City
hall of statues, floor design by what looked like Nigerians lol, but it was good fun I bought a camera tripod, and jade found a great home made ring. After spending a good chunk of time there we, headed to a café and did some people watching until it was time to head to our first couch surfing experience (couch surfing is a website which gets you in contact with people who want to host you in there country).
After an interesting bus ride into the suburbs and a bit of getting lost and some slight disagreements (had been a long day) we finally found Oigroig’s flat. He was a very nice guy, and had a great apartment. After a short break and a nice shower we headed into Rome for dinner with one of his friends. Dinner was great we had quite a few local starters including a delicious thick cut tomato on bread with olive oil drizzled over! And the pizza was great as well, but I had eaten so many starters I couldn’t finish it! So so shocking but was a great meal. We were there until about 12.30 so jade got so celebrate her birthday as well, we took an absolute
crack-up pics of her before and after 12;-p Afterwards they took us for a walk around Rome and all the fountains including the Fontana di Trevi which was just incredible, Rome and sights which was so amazing to see. After that we headed to one of the bars and we were introduced so some of the locals and for jades B-day they even bought a round of shots for us! Was a great shot but still have no idea what was in it lol. Our host was lucky enough to get a rose and a kiss from one of the girls? luck guy but he is of course an Italian stallion=p After the shot we were shown an amazing flat just down the road, and amazingly enough we were offered to use it for the next night!! I was so amazed and shocked I was speechless. It was the most amazing place and the pictures hardly do it justice. I am so impressed by the kindness and generosity of the people I have met in Italy. So after an remarkable night we headed home happy and tired.
Waking up and repacking the bags for easier haulage we got a lift
with Oigroig to the metro station. And got the metro to the flat new place we were staying for the night. Having almost no trouble finding it we dropped of our bags and went out to the Campo de' Fiori (about 20meters form the flat!!) markets to get some fresh food for lunch and dinner (not that we had a kitchen). After buying some ingredients we dropped them off at the flat and went exploring. We did a lot of walking and saw the coliseum, old Rome, a large museum (not sure which one) and a lot of other sites, which have sort of slipped my mind at the moment. At the coliseum we met a guy she was doing a roman pub crawl that night free drinks for an hour and 5 or 6 clubs afterward with a free shot in each, all for only 20 Euro, yes I know not cheap but the fact that jade got in for free because it was her birthday more than made up for it!
That evening jade made a great dinner, I was teaching her how to cook and doing my best not to take over because I am notoriously bad
at taking over a kitchen.
After dinner we headed to wards the coliseum and met up with the other revellers, quite amazing drinking with a bunch of international’s right in front of the coliseum its defiantly something I’d suggest trying! We met some great people and had a ball, while it was jade birthday and I should have being carrying her home, she didn’t really feel like drinking an I was being fed all her drinks…
Soooo when we had to wake up at 6am an head off to the train to Florence I wasn’t such a happy boy, luckily Jade was a star and did a great job making sure we left everything in good condition and got out in time, We did end up at the wrong train station and missed our train but were lucky enough to get another one just a little while later.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.333s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0756s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Erin
non-member comment
Cool pics
Hey, what cool pics, Hope I can travel to rome one day !!