We flew into Rome Ciampino early the next day. First and foremost, we went to a little marketplace outside and bought me some Italian underwear. I needed some, because all my wash was still soaking wet back in my room in Bristol! So now I have two pairs of quite uncomfortable Italian boxers called NaiGe.
Immediately there were problems. The metro wasn’t working, so we had to take a bus into
It took a few wrong turns and a lot of walking before we finally made it to the hostel. We were a bit tired, but we had many things to see, so we freshened up and headed for the Coliseum:
The ruins around the Colosseo, called the "Foro Romano" (Roman forum), were quite impressive as well:
The Arco di Costantino.
The Palantine is also right next door, where the emperor used to live. I think the coolest thing about this area is that nothing is really roped off: you can just go ahead and sit down on ruins from the B.C. era! I swear I could see Marcus Vorenus (from the HBO series Rome) cutting people's heads off in the distance.We wanted to go inside the Coliseum, but if we bought the ticket we would have only had a half hour or so inside as it was getting late, so regrettably, we had to skip that. But we walked down the street and saw a few more really old Roman buildings, and the Piazza Venezia, which is an absolutely gigantic monument. I took a couple of blurry pictures of it, but they didn't turn out because my camera is rubbish. Also somewhere along the way, we had our first gelatos, which we indulged in quite a few times for such a short trip...
From there, I believe we took a taxi over to look at the Trevi Fountain:
Of course we were obligated to throw coins over our shoulders into the fountain - so now we'll be sure to come back. After a long sit at the fountain, we headed back towards the hostel for dinner. Dinner was absolutely delicious. I had a little house wine and eggplant parmigiana (which was super cheesy delicious), and Mom had lasagna. The lasagna had no tomato sauce in it, and we joked that she'd been in Italy almost a full day without eating something with tomato sauce! We both had grilled chicken for the second course. Dessert was tiramisu for me, and some kind of delicious custard thing for Mom. I wasn't prepared for the coffee, which was quite strong. After dinner, we headed back for the hostel. Along the way we bought ourselves some cannolis from a bakery for the next day. Just in case anyone was wondering, I think between my mom's cooking, Gelatos/pizza in Rome, and pastries in Paris, i gained about 5 pounds in a week.The hostel in Italy was quite nice - I think it's my favorite that I've been in so far. We had 6 other people in our room, all of whom were quite nice and friendly. One was a girl from Australia, one was a guy from Ireland, one was a guy from Singapore, and there was a guy from Montreal as well. The only problem was one of the workers when we were checking out - his English wasn't very good, and he thought he was supposed to keep my 10 euro deposit for the lockers. But we got that all sorted.
The next day we had the free hostel breakfast, which was pretty much rubbish, and the cannolis for breakfast. I think I'm aspiring to be a big fat Italian man that eats cannolis and pasta all day. And in Rome, I did pretty much just that.
We took the metro to the Vatican. We woke up late and took our time getting ready to go, but little did we know that we would be just in time to see the Pope giving mass! He was speaking in Italian, so we didn't understand a word he said, but it was still awesome. Here he is in the Popemobile:
Here's a better view of St. Peter's Basilica:
As you can see, it was quite packed. After the Pope was done talking, we got in line for what a few different people told us was the queue for the Sistine Chapel. We found out that it was actually the line for the inside of St Peter's though, so I went searching for the Sistine Chapel while my Mom stayed in line. But when I found out where to go and came back, they weren't letting anyone into the plaza! So we had to waste a bit of time looking for each other, but we eventually did. We took a break and got ourselves some pizza:
I forgot to mention that somewhere along the way, I had bought myself a Roma shirt for 5 euro. Probably the cheapest thing I bought on the whole vacation...So once we were fueled up, we were ready to go and check out the Vatican Museum/Sistine chapel. Wow, do they have a lot of stuff. The thing about Rome is that there's just so much to see that it's overwhelming. When every few blocks there's beautiful statues and monuments, they start to become less interesting then they should be. Eventually, the Spanish Steps become just steps, and all the beautiful sculptures in the Vatican Museum become just ordinary. It's unfair, I think, but true nonetheless. Anyways, here's one of my favorite parts of the Museum:
I thought it was just as beautiful as the Sistine Chapel, but I'm pretty sure it didn't take 4 years of painting on your back, and the artists were certainly not Michelangelo. It's called the Gallery of Maps, because there's a bunch of maps painted on the sides, but I preferred the artwork on the ceilings.After much more beautiful exhibits, we finally made it into the Sistine. It was very beautiful. They're very strict inside: you have to be quiet and you can't take pictures. But I did manage to sneak one in (Shhhhhhhhh!):
It turned out like crap because I was trying to be so sneaky, but you can tell it's the Creation of Adam. I got tsked by an Italian lady for taking this picture by the way. I felt ashamed when I saw her waving her finger at me, but not ashamed enough to delete it...Afterwards we took the metro back to the Spanish Steps:
They were alright. It was under construction or renovation at the time, so that was kind of lame; also it was really crowded with tourists (ugh...touuuuuurists), and didn't quite compare to some of the other sights of Rome (at least I don't think it did). So we hung about on the steps for a little bit as a well deserved break, and then headed over to the nearby Pantheon:
It was originally a temple to the Roman gods, but was converted into a church. When we went in there was an orchestra playing, and it was really beautiful inside, despite a big hole in the ceiling:
Someone really ought to fix that.After a walk around the Pantheon, we strolled over to the nearby Piazza Navona. A couple of things of note happened there. 1) A live band struck up a tune right next to us and 2) I was scammed into buying a piece of string for 3 euros. Here's a video of the band:
After watching them for a bit, I fell prey to a guy who wanted me to hold out my pinky. At first I said no, but I was quite intrigued, so he convinced me to. He wrapped up red, white, and green string using my pinky, all the while sweet-talking me and my mother. He told me that I have been drinking a little bit too much because I have a beer belly, and he said he thought my mom was my sister:
I told him he better not even try to tell me that this thing cost 20 euro, and he laughed and told me it was a million dollars. Then he tried to tell me it was 5 euros, and mom said no way. To which he replied "This is not Bangladesh, sweetheart. It costs 5 euros for a cup of coffee." So after a bit of bargaining, I got a piece of string for 3 euro. I'm going to keep wearing it until it falls off. I think it was worth the 3 euro just for the story, and the realization that we weren't in Bangladesh.
The Italians as a people weren't really very friendly, but I don't blame them really. I don't like when summer tourists come to Brick, so I can understand why they'd be annoyed with us. That being said, there was no reason to be as rude as some of them were.
For dinner, we had fried mozzarella and pizza again! My pizza had prosciutto on it, Mom had spaghetti:
All of the Italian food we ate was quite delicious. We headed back to the hostel and watched a nature special with a bunch of the people staying there. It was about indigenous tribes of the Amazon, and this English guy who joins them for a couple weeks, it was funny.We found out that the metro doesn't run late at night, and neither do buses, and we had to leave quite early for our flight the next day. So we had to reserve a taxi to drive us back to the airport, and it wasn't cheap. But that's ok, because we made it to Paris the next day, and we had a wonderful stay in Rome.
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