Off to Rome

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We were out the door by 8:30am with our very very heavy luggage. By this point I was lugging around all of the glass that I had bought in Venice (gondolas, jewelry, wine stoppers, etc) and three bottles of lemoncielo. I was going to have my work cut out for me to get to the train station. It was a pretty strenuous journey trying to navigate the construction and gravel roads, and it even started to rain as we got closer to the train station. I actually welcomed the rain because I was having severe hot flashes and appreciated being able to cool off.

While waiting for the train to Rome, I rewarded myself with McD breakfast...sausage egg and cheese muffin, hashbrown, and real American coffee! Now I was feeling happy and got my second wind as we had to trek our luggage to cabin number 12 on the train. It took about an hour and a half to get to the Termini station in Rome. Fortunately, the new hostel that we had found was only a 2 minute walk from the train station...which was a miracle b/c by then we were so tired of carrying our luggage around everywhere. Our hostel even had a ramp and an elevator! I was in love already....

The guy that owns the hostel, Bengi, was my age and really nice/helpful. He pretty much circled everywhere on the map that we should hit over the next 6 days. Of course I had to go and get my own map and do my own highlighting. We were so excited to finally be in Rome and didn't bother with too much unpacking. It was time to eat and then check out some sights!

We found another cafe with cheap sandwiches, sat down for a quick lunch and then ventured off to find the Trevi Fountain and Spanish steps. The Trevi fountain was pretty awesome despite the chaos of people and vendors surrounding it. We threw our coin into the Trevi fountain over our left shoulder backwards, and hoped that one day we would indeed set foot back in Rome. We ended up covering a lot of distance and sights on our first day in Rome. We climbed the Spanish steps, passed by Villa Medici, walked through the Piazza del Popolo, shopped along the Via del Corso, and stopped by the Republic. This pretty much took us until around 7:00 in the evening.

We headed back to RetRome, picked up dinner at the supermarket along the way, and came back and cooked our chicken and pasta before the magic show at 8:00pm. Then Bengi razzled and dazzled us with his amazing skills and slight of hand. I have to say I was pretty impressed!

At night we hung out with Gajal's cousin Sharm and her husband Laurence. They were pretty entertaining and we didn't leave their place until sometime after 11pm. By then we were pretty tired and just went straight to bed.

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