Roma I

Rome I- better late than never right? and there will be two more still after this one, but not tonight!

Monday afternoon I left Florence on a train that took 4 hours to get to Rome. It was a long train ride, but I think that I much prefer travelling by train than by plane. On the train there is a lot to see, as the Italian country side zoomed by, and I could get up and move around as much as I wanted to avoid getting stiff legs, both things you simply cannot do on an airplane. But the long ride was much appreciated as I really needed some down time after the whirlwind weekend that I spent travelling around Italy; the four hours of rest were very nice. I wrote for my blogged and reminded myself how close I was to seeing Alana! When the train arrived in Rome, we trekked down to our hostel which was about ten blocks from the train station, and I immediately commented on how much more like Paris Rome is than the other cities we visited… but more on this later.

We made it to the hostel and checked in with Alex, who was the young man at the desk, who I would later realize, probably never slept! But as soon as we dropped our stuff in the hostel (which also turned out to be a very interesting place, but more on that later as well) we set off to find Alana at the Trevi Fountain! However, Rome does not have the public transportation systems that Paris does, so we set off on foot to find the Trevi Fountain. The transportation system in Rome is different for one main reason… every time they try to dig a tunnel to add to the metro, they run into something! They are constantly running into Roman ruins… and then they just can’t build it! So needless to say we got lost… stumbling around Rome dying to see Alana, and really wishing for an easy metro like there is in Paris… But we found it, and found Alana through the crowds of people who are always there! It was crazy, but nothing could have made me happier than to be reunited with my lovely Alana! So we then went over to the Pantheon and made our way over to Piazza Navona for dinner, where we had a lovely Italian dinner with pasta and wine and bruschetta and dessert.

By that point it was only around 9pm, so we decided to head out on a little walk to find Saint Peters… So we trekked over to the Vatican, across the city at night to see St. Peter’s by moonlight… ok so just at night because it was kind of raining (and yes for all those who might be interested the POS green umbrella did come out for a bit to protect us from the drizzle, or really to protect our cameras. I really love walking and seeing cities on foot… by day and by night, and surprisingly Rome is not all that large, since we walked all over in just about an hour… but by that point Alana was very tired since she had been at school all day so we walked her to her tram and bid her goodnight… then Matt and I went and sat in a little café to escape the rain, have a glass of wine, and plan our tour for the next day (Tuesday) which we decided should be a tour of ancient Rome… minus the Roman Forum and the Coloseum because we knew we were going to go see those things with Alana on Thursday and Friday. And then we set out back to the hostel on foot, since we had yet to figure out the bus system in Rome…

We arrived back at our hostel, dead on our feet, greeted by Alex the door guy… and I went to climb in my bunk bed… only to find that there was a man in the bed that I had picked out… apparently he had fallen out of his top bunk twice and asked to be moved to a bottom bunk. But it def scared the crap out of me! I feel like now is as good a time as any to talk a little bit about our hostel experience in Rome… because I feel like it was a pretty classic one, even if we didn’t spend a ton of time there, we still spent enough time there to meet some crazy/funny/interesting people from all over the world. We met Scottish Mike who was in Rome to teach English for three months and a girl whose name I don’t remember who was Argentinean and Italian and she was going back and forth between the UK and Italy trying to get here Italian citizenship so she could have a European passport. Then there was the Hungarian guys who showed up on Thursday night and through a party at the hostel, and the French teacher on holiday, and the Japanese guy who was in Italy with his handy copy of the book The Game which supposedly teaches you how to pick up girls… There was also the random guy who played his guitar every morning at 8am (not my favourite guy) and best of all there was the Italian guy (the one in my bed, who kept falling out of his) who was probably 45 and staying in a youth hostel (we never exactly figured out what he was doing there or why…) but he was hilarious. So for 8 euro a night during the week and 10 Euro a night on the weekend, we got to meet all of these interesting people… and speak English since that was the language which everyone had in common, and really just have an awesome experience. We only had one little bed bug scare, but so far (and it’s been three weeks) both Matt and I are bed bug free! It was definitely a good if not random experience and I would recommend the Mona Lisa youth hostel to anyone!

So now, the next morning Matt and I set out on our Roman tour of the city. We started with some roman baths which have now been converted into a church… made our way over to the Colloseum where we did not go in, but simply look from the outside and admired the arch of Constantine as well. At this point we were harassed almost to death by people trying to get English speaking tourists to go on some sort of a tour another, which was very annoying! We took to refusing them in French so they would leave us alone… (all of these things are what is pictured through out this post) and then we went to see the Trevi Fountain by day, and the Pantheon. Then we met Alana for lunch… where we had gelato and looked at some ruins… then Alana was back to class, and we were back to our Roman tour! We walked along the river down to see a ruin of a theatre, and then we just decided to walk to the other side of the city, along the river. It was a good long walk, that is for sure, but it was warm and sunny at that point, and we loved every minute of it. From there we went over to see the Spanish steps, which were not in keeping with our Roman tour, but that is ok, and we had a bit of a rest and a glass of wine. Drinking wine in a café makes me feel very grown up! We then trekked back over to the Piazza Novona to find Alana and to go to her apartment
to make dinner and meet her roommates! They are interesting, and we stayed there for a little while, went out for dessert and then Matt and I made our way back to the hostel because after hours and hours of walking, I actually thought my legs might fall off…

But we woke up refreshed and ready to go on Wednesday! We actually slept
in a little, and had another lovely walk through this garden in the northern part of the city… it was nice and cool and very enjoyable, and there were lots of funny people on these weird bike things. It was nice to walk and just enjoy the sun. I really wanted a big cup of coffee at that point too,
but sadly the Italians drink even stronger and smaller cups of espresso than the French do, so we stopped and had a quick lunch and I had a shot of espresso to revive myself… and then, we were off to the Vatican!


I had mixed feelings about going to Vatican City to see the Vatican museum. There are priceless treasures there, that really cannot be missed on a trip to Rome, but at the same time I have so many problems with the Catholic church, and their politics, and the ridiculous amount of wealth they posses and don’t share, and the you see the ads on TV for people to send money to the nuns who are old and sick and have no money, but there is the church with all that money, and they can’t help the nuns? (that is a shout out to you mom, but I cant help but agree.) I saw a lot of wonderful things, including the Sistine Chapel painted my Michael Angelo himself, and lots of paintings in the papal quarters and the “Modern Religious Art” Collection that included paintings by Mac’s favourites, Otto Dix and Max Ernst, and I have every intention of asking him about that when I talk to him again. What? I was really confused by the modern art collection that is for sure. I am not sure I saw the religious themes in the works… and in all of their collection of modern art, with lots of big names, they did not have a Picasso, which strangely made me kind of happy, I don’t know why. We spent a long time in the museum and then went over and went inside St. Peter’s Basilica before it closed. It was magnificent, and they were having mass which was really cool… but then we went back outside to find that it was raining, and it had gotten dark as it has a tendency to do. So we found a café and had some hot chocolate, and wrote post cards to our friends and family at home.


But by this point we were hungry, and we were supposed to meet up with Christine DiGangi because it was almost her birthday, but we needed to find an internet café to check facebook to find her… and don’t ask for an internet café in Rome, ask for an internet point, because they look at you and are really confused about how coffee and internet are related to each other, just fyi if you are ever in Rome in the rain looking for an internet point keep that in mind. But this was really when the sad pathetic and POS umbrella sort of came in handy again. It came in handy I guess, but the fact that it kept turning inside out about every 10 steps really meant that it was not keeping us all that dry in the rain… and we were cold and hungry and we walked all the way back across the city in the rain under the POS umbrella… I only wish we had a picture so that we could have seen how absurd and rather pathetic we looked that night.

We finally found an internet point, but it was too late to meet up with Christine, so we had a very late dinner, and went back to the hostel, to drop into our beds once again…but when we got back to the hostel all the lights were on, and people were up talking!
That was when we really got to me meet the people I described before, and it made me I that we were where we were, and that we were doing what we were doing… I have always thought about the days when I would be in college travelling around Europe… and here I am doing it! Those were two very busy days, and there was a lot more to come in the following days, but you will have to read about that in the next post that will cover Thursday and Friday’s adventures! I hope you enjoy the pics and some of my reflections here… there are definitely more reflections to come!