Eurotrip #4: ROMA

Well it finally feels good to login into this and to see all the tabs as English.  Ohh, I missed English.

As you may know, I'm home from my eurotrip!  But I am also waaay behind on updating this!  So here goes.

We got to Rome around the late evening and checked into our hostel.  Since we were in Italy and didn't know our way around, especially at night, we stayed in that night at the hostel bar.  We figured it was safer.  We met a whole lot of people (mainly Americans, like always), had a bunch of fun, and stayed up too late.

We woke up sometime in the early afternoon, took showers and hit the town!  I instantly fell in love with Rome, it's so pretty!!  And theres a ton of street vendors!! I love street vendors.  The first thing we did was walk to the Colleseum.  That thing is huge!  Before we went in, we found someone selling gelato and sat down on a wall infron of the Colleseum to eat our yummy food.  Sadly, my gelato fell off my cone, 20 feet  down :(  Anyways, we went in the Colleseum and look around and took some picture.  It was actually really cool and pretty!  After that we walked around the city or ruins for a little bit, took more pictures, then we left to go see more of Rome!

Foutains everywhere!

The Colleseum!

My gelato right before it fell :(

Inside the Colleseum!

Had no idea it looked like this on the inside.

Honestly, I don't know what I'm looking at right now

More ruins.

We walked to the tomb of the unknown soldier, which is HUGE by the way.  Then we sat down on the ground and ate a delicious pizza from a food vendor.  You serisously cannot buy a crappy pizza in Italy.  It's impossible.

The tomb of the uknown soldier

Just sitting on the sidewalk eating pizza!

After we were done eating, we made our way through the city to the Pantheon!  It's like no where special, just in a little city square hidden behind buildings.  It was really cool though! The square it was in had a huge fountain, little places to eat outside, street performers playing the violin and a whole bunch of people.  It even had people dressed up as Roman Gladiators to take picture with!  It was super embarrasing, but Caity and I got some pictures with them.  We got jipped us though because the stupid pictures cost 5 euro!  Oh well, a pictures worth a thousand words, right?

This needs no caption.

She took my man.

Next, we squirmed our way through the city to the Trevi Fountain!  All I could think about was Lizzie McGuire and how she met Paolo there.  Sadly, I didn’t see Paolo. We just got bombarded with people because that place is small and crowded!  It was pretty though! (like everything in Rome).

I didn't see Paolo, but I saw Lizzie and Gordo!!

Making wishes!

After walking like a thousands miles and taking even more pictures, we only had one more sight to see that day: The Spanish Steps!  They were so pretty and the view was so good!  There were hundreds of people sitting on the stairs with their boyfriends/grildfriends, people selling purses, sunglasses and roses, and artists sitting and sketching the city!  It was so fun.  Caity and I, with our feet that hurt like hell, decided to sit down for a while.  While we were sitting, obviously we got pestered to buy things from vendors.  Some drunk (and hilarious) Americans came onto the steps being loud and hysterically funny, like all drunk Americans are.  They walked down a little bit and one of them yelled "POLIZIA!".  Literally, within 10 seconds all the illegal vendors hastily scooped up their designer purses and sunglasses and ran for the stairs.  There was probably 15 indian vedors with white sacks on their back holding their goods, walking up the steps.  Five minutes later they came back down the steps like nothing had happened.

Sitting on the Spanish Steps after a long day in ROMA!

Indian Santa Claus

Beautifully crowded!

Oh yeah, I saw Audrey too.  Through I'd snap this pic in black and white for dramatic effect.

We were so tired that day that we just went upstairs and went to bed.  In the morning we woke up and walked to the Vatican City!  Hello Mr. Pope!  The line was incredibly long!  While we were in line, we had like 5 people come up to us to try and sell us expensive tickets to get into the Vatican City quicker, with a tour guide.  We said no 4 times.  Then an English speaking girl came up to sell them to us.  We said no for about 7 minutes, then we finally caved in.  We didn't want to wait in the line as much as she wanted to sell us the tickets, so once again, we splurged.  The tickets were a tad pricey, but we got into the Vatican quicker and out tour guide was from America, so it wasn't too bad!  The tour lasted about two and a half hours, but we saw and learned alot. Example: Michelangelo was getting fed up with the Pope pestering him aboiut how long it was taking him to pain the Sistine Chapel, so he painted an angel's butt on it.  Basically giving the Pope a little jab for him to back off because aparently Michaelangelo hated painting, but reluctantly did it anyways.

Entance to the Vatican City

The Sistine Chaple!

It's so small!

If you can't see it, that a butt.

Other things I learned about the Vatican City:

It's its own country.  It's the smallest country in the world!

The popes like to steal things from people and countries, then deny it.

It lies and directs people the in the opposite direction to the Sistine Chapel, so they can't find it.

80 percent of it is gardens

It's almost impossible to find your way out into Rome.

Stolen pinecone

Stolen head

Famous statue, Probably stolen.

Another famous statue

Inspiration for The Thinker

The Sistine Chapel it actually directly to the right, not the left.

After the Vatican City, we headed to the hostel, and miraculously saw our roommate on the underground.  So crazy.  We walked all the way back with him, then we grabbed our luggage and headed to the train station to go to Florence!!  In Lizzie McQure's worlds "This is what dreaaaaams are made of" would sum up my eurotrip so far!  It's a dream come true!  Anyways, that morning, in Rome, we decided instead of spending 3 days in Naples, we should go to Florence for a day.  So here we were, 5 hours later, heading to Florence! 

But Florence is another story for another blog post.

For all you Gamma Chi's, here's a link to my facebook album!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1862692565789.2053243.1195200318&type=1&l=9a4b2fb478

xx