We arrived in Rome Thursday night. Thanksgiving. Our flight was filled with not just the three of us, but other castle dwellers Lewis, Patrick, Mia, Nathan, Ariel K, and Lexi in addition to Braden and his two parents who had come to visit and were going with him to Rome for the weekend before leaving back for the states.
After all parting at the bus station, Nicole, Kendra and I found our way to our ho(s)tel. We booked it on hostelworld.com just like all our other hostels but it was a sort of hostel/hotel hybrid. It was run by this one middle-aged middle eastern dude who was actually really nice. He ended up giving us a free bottle of wine on the second night and upgraded our room since they were overbooked for the type of room we had booked. So we ended up getting a four-person private room with our own bathroom (since the three of us were meeting up with our friend Sebastian there there would be four in the room) instead of a four-person room with a shared bathroom for only a little over 12 euro. Epic bargain, and the room wasn't half-bad.
After some nice ravioli at a restaurant somewhat down the road and finally meeting up with Sebastian, we decided to call it a night so that we could take full advantage of the next full day we had.
We started, as you can see, at the Vatican! The Vatican on Friday midday actually was not nearly as crowded as we thought it would be. The line to get into St. Peters wasn't too long and moved really quickly and it was just nice. Not to mention beautiful. We had been told/read online that it was supposed to rain all weekend but with the exception of a bit of a sprinkle while we were still sleeping on Saturday morning, it was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there. It felt like September weather.
Waiting on line to get into St. Peters! I think we only stood on it for about 20 minutes.
As soon as you walk in, directly to your right, there sits the Pieta sculpture. We had no idea it was there and were a little bit blown away when we first saw it.
We spent a WHILE walking around the Basilica. Probably about an hour and a half. It is probably the hugest church I've ever been in, even huger than Notre Dame, and there is so much artwork and so many things to see it totally sucks you in.
We also came across many attractive priests in the Basilica. I know it's probably blasphemous, but Kendra snapped a few pictures.
We, of course, had to pose outside once we left. And after that set off to find some lunch. We ate at a small cafe down a side street just outside the Vatican. We decided to explore some nearby souvenirshops before heading over to the Vatican Museums though, and came across this:
Apparently we are not the only ones to appreciate the attractive priests in Rome.
We walked around basically half of the Vatican to get to the Vatican Museums. By the time we reached the entrance it was just about 4, but we weren't sure which door to go in. After some minor inspection, we discovered it, but just as we were about to walk up to it, it closed. For the day. Apparently the museums don't let people in past 4pm during the week and actually close for the day at 6. We missed it by literally 10 seconds.
Though we were slightly upset, we decided that this wasn't going to stop us or dampen our sight-seeing! We headed back to the metro area and took a bus back over the river into the middle of the city, got off at some piazza (there are so many, I'll never remember all their names) and decided to head for the pantheon.
And here it is. We wandered into a lot of tiny shops on the way because much of Rome consists of winding back alleys and cobbled streets with stores spilling out of them. There was definitely much to be found and we occupied ourselves on the walk. My favorite gift shop was located directly across from it, actually. They sold all of these ancient Roman replicas of coins and tools and things like that, and the guy who was working there was playing Radiohead, and when Kendra and I got excited about the song he put on he saw us singing and turned it up for us. It was cute.
Inside the Pantheon is really weird, because despite the fact that it was created when the Romans still believed in mythology, it's been totally Christianized. Basically, there are Jesus sculptures everywhere. We enjoyed walking around inside though and we took many pictures (most of which are not uploaded yet so I can't post them here) of ourselves standing under the huge hole in the ceiling.
From the Pantheon we walked a short way to Piazza Navona, which is one of Rome's hugest and most well-known piazzas. It has a gorgeous fountain in the middle and they were actually setting up for a carnival, which was really cute. After hanging around there for a while, we walked down to Campo de Fiori, which is another piazza-like place (also really well-known and we were recommended to check it out). We got some awesome Roman-like pizza at this bakery-type place (that we were told to check out by our friend Anna, who had been in Rome the weekend before) and the best part was that they charged us for the pizza by how much it weighed, and I think we ended up getting four nicely-sized slices for about 6 euro total.
From there we took a bus back towards where we'd begun, but a little farther north, and found the Trevi Fountain not too far from there. The Trevi Fountain is Rome's most famous fountain (and trust me, there are fountains EVERYWHERE, both for aesthetic purposes and for convenience - you can actually drink the water in a lot of them). It was designed by Bernini and it's a tradition for all those who go to take turns throwing coins into it and making a wish (we did, and Sebastian caught a picture of it, but again the photo has not yet been uploaded). And actually, the Roman government collects the money and uses it to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's needy.
From the Trevi Fountain we walked to the Spanish Steps, another must-see sight in Rome. I was actually sliiiiiiightly disappointed with them, but only because there was trash all over them. I mean, they were cool and all, but they also weren't even lit up or anything, so they were just kinda...there.
Still cool to say that we got to see them though.
After that, we headed back for the night. We went out for some late-night pizza a little bit later and attempted to find a wine bar, but to no avail. Regardless, we still had fun!
The next day we went back to the Vatican Museums first thing, to be sure we didn't miss them. The only sucky thing about the experience was that the Sistine Chapel is at the very end after you walk through this maze of Renaissance art and things that we honestly didn't really care so much about, and we had to pay 8 euro to get in to see it all even though all we wanted was to see the Sistine Chapel. We walked through a lot of the museum and did see a lot of nifty sculptures though, so it was pretty cool, but mainly stayed on the path to the Sistine Chapel.
And then we found it. It was actually a LOT smaller than I had anticipated, which sort of caught me off guard. It was also packed, and even though there are many signs around asking visitors not to take pictures, everyone was, so we snapped a few quick shots of our own. It was completely surreal. We could not believe that we were standing in this incredible place, this holy, pilgrimaged, revered place. It. Was. So. Cool.
After a late lunch at a husband-and-wife-owned restaurant a few blocks away (the wife was crazy, by the way, we decided that her name was Graziella and it totally suits her) we decided to head towards the coliseum.
We hopped on the same bus we had used the day before, assuming it would take us where we had to go. Sebastian had his GPS on him so he kept track of us so that we'd know when to get off (since Rome does not publish any sort of bus map and most of the busses TV screens don't show their stops like they're supposed to, so you're really not sure where you are at any time). We went allllllll the way to the other side of the city (basically where the coliseum is) and were totally awed as we drove by all of these incredibly huge and massive ruins. We got a bit distracted and a little bit too late realized that we had taken the wrong bus and were not going where we should have been. We hopped off at a stop supposedly near a metro, but couldn't find it, so we went back to where other busses were leaving from and asked one of the drivers of one of them if he was going to the coliseum. I don't think he really understood what we were asking but when he heard the word coliseum he said yes, so we hopped on. After we got on we realized that the bus was half-sized (we later realized so that it could fit through the narrow streets in that part of town that would take us to the coliseum) and that we were the only people on it. The entire way there the driver talked to us in half-Italian half-English about how we have to watch out for lions and tigers in the coliseum, continually apologizing for his bad English. It was really cute.
But we made it there! It was so great. Unfortunately, due to our bus fail we had gotten there after it closed, but there were still tons of people around (and even guys dressed up as Roman warriors that you could pose for pictures with!) and we figured that we could regardless enjoy its awesomeness despite not being able to go inside. And we did. We walked, ran, and sat around it for a while, snapping all sorts of pictures and talking to each other.
Then we wandered not too far away to this massive arc monument that supposedly inspired the Arc du Triomphe in Paris. This is us hanging off of the gate surrounding it, since unlike the Arc in Paris, you can't actually go near this one.
And lastly we decided to explore the ruins. The Roman Forum and all of its ruins are sort of connected to where the coliseum is and it's very easy (in the daytime) to walk tgetting darhrough them (though it would take hours) and still easy (at night) to walk around them, so we did. It was incredible seeing all of the buildings that used to exist but that were barely there. So many HUGE structures are still left too but you can't really tell what they were. You basically just walk all around the perimeter on these overlooking veranda-type things and you can look down into where everything used to be. My favorite bit was this huge half-statue of a boy stuck into the floor to his waist. Everything was all lit up because it was getting dark and it just looked so beautiful.
After we were done, we walked over to Piazza Venezia and to the top of these MASSIVE steps at San Marco that pretty much overlooked the entire section of the city. It was great, but we were WIPED by the end, so we headed back towards our hostel and found a semi-fancy restaurant for dinner to have our one nice meal (it only ended up being about 9 euro each, I think, so it wasn't even that bad), went back to the hostel and our free wine, and hung around with each other before calling it a night.
The next day our flight back was around noon, so we woke up and checked out by 10, got to the bus station, grabbed our bus to the airport, and made it easily, getting us back to the castle in the early afternoon with plenty of time left to do homework (hurray!).
Now it is Thursday night and in between showering, finishing an art history paper, and sorting laundry, I have to pack! I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Glasgow (my last real trip this semester) and I couldn't be more excited. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment