Long long ago in a place called Rome

Hello all,
can you believe it's already the middle of November? Time passes incredibly fast when you're without work.. haha. Yes, I realize I promised updates from my European travels, but I got distracted by life. However, I did keep a sort of journal while traveling, so I will fulfill my previous promises and retroactively update everyone on the past trip.

Rome August 1 - 3

Our last day on the program in Sorrento was a Thursday that was spent at the Sorrento Lingue Center, frantically trying to finish and turn in our exams and papers. The night before I stayed up really late to finish my exams, pack my belongings, and clean our apartment I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised when I woke up late. I rushed to finish pack, dropped my excess luggage off at the center (because the staff was nice enough to let us keep our stuff there for the rest of our trip), turned in my exam and went back to get the luggage I would be traveling with, all before heading to the Circumvesuviana. We missed the train I had originally planned to take and arrived at the Napoli Garibaldi Station just in time to watch our train to Rome leave. Literally, I ran to the platform just to see the train whiz past my face. Now, we had experienced some displeasing incidences with Italian trains before, so I was super concerned that we would have to buy a completely new ticket and be ripped off by the Trenitalia, yet again. However, after a few minutes of worred wandering, I found out that we could just take the next train. So we did. The new train left only an hour later and we arrived in Rome at 2:30pm. We lugged our bags to the hotel and just sat on our beds for 2 hours, figuring out what we wanted to see in the next few days. We decided our first stop would be the Trevi Fountain, followed by a nice visit to the Spanish Steps. But then we decided we should probably eat before we did anything. Guess what we chose to eat? Yup, Chinese food.

Delicious, I had a simple chicken fried rice and it was wonderful.


Following our culinary trip to China..town, we wandered our way to the Trevi Fountain. We saw a bunch of really interesting buildings and statues along the way, most notably the Basilica Maria degli something.. the door to this place was cool in a creepy way as it had figures of human body parts coming out of the door:

Ah, there it is, the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri.
If you look closely.. On the right there's a torso and head with a cross embeded into it. On the left there are body parts.



The Trevi Fountain (Fontana di Trevi, as the Italians call it) turned up after a couple of windy streets and the first thing we noticed was the immense crowd around the fountain. I'm sure the fountain is always crowded, come on, it's THE Trevi fountain.
On a side note, I found a picture of my uncle in front of the Trevi fountain from the 70's, I thought it was cool..
The fountain was indeed an attraction for good reason, it's huge! And detailed too, statues of tritons and horses and a guy named Oceanus are all over the place. We took a ton of pictures and I even threw a coin in, as everyone does, but I forgot to make a wish, whups.

After fighting our way out of the crowds, we started looking for the Spanish Steps (Piazza di Spagna, or Spanish Plaza, actually). By this time, night had fallen and the place was beautiful, all the lights were on and the crowd wasn't too massive. We climbed up the stairs, sat down, and opened a bottle of wine. We sat there drinking wine for an hour and a half, while taking all sorts of silly pictures. Definitely relaxing, I would return soon if given the chance...


See, the less than massive crowds, the top, where we chilled, wasn't this crowded, really.

We then headed back to the hotel, but not before getting some much needed gelato. A perfect ending to a perfect night.






The next day we went to the Coloseum (GLADIATORRRR), Piazza Fiori (chill outdoor market), Piazza Navona (cool statues), the Pantheon (huge hole in the ceiling, or opening to heaven), Piazza del Popolo (massive fountain, crazy man swimming in it), and the Trevi fountain (again).

Yea, that's the coloseum.

There it is again.












Hey look, a gladiator!

They were actually a little mean, but I guess everyone's gotta hustle to make a living.






I swear I was there!

Climbing in someone's house












The big hole in the ceiling at the Pantheon
We ended the incredibly HOT day with a meal of Eritrean food, there were a lot of Eritreans in the area where our hotel was located. If you've never had Eritrean food, go get some. They serve everything your party orders on a huge plate over this porous bread. You take a piece of the bread and grab some of the food in it and stuff it in your mouth. SO GOOD.

Sunday, the day of the lord, and we went to Vatican City. We attended mass in St. Peter's Basilica and it was unbelievable. First we go through a thorough security check (shoulders and knees need to be covered) then we walked through the crypt where they keep all the past popes and saints.. their corpses that is.. then we waited for the 10:30am mass. Anyone can go, so I did, despite the lack of Catholicism in my everyday life, I went for the experience. The Basilica is magnificent, everything is leafed in gold, the statues are plentiful, the molding and other decorations were intricate, and everything has a holy feel. If that makes any sense, which I guess it doesn't, it does to me...



See, I was also really in Vatican City, for real.






Us, sad >>

Sadly, and VERY unfortunately, the Sistine Chapel was CLOSED. Yes, I went all the way to Rome, spent a month and a half in Italy and never saw the Sistine Chapel, I may have failed as a traveler. Oh well, guess this means I have to return to Italy, I GUESS I don't mind. This was our last day in Rome so we ended it with a meal of.... Chinese food. Of course we did. We then ran to catch our bus to the airport and flew to Barcelona.

I must say, Rome is not over rated and lives up to its hype as a must visit destination.
This has been a really long update, and I've only covered Rome. I'll leave the other destinations for some other time. Hope you enjoyed!