Romaaaa..

When in Rome..be spontaneous, don't have a plan and go on an adventure..at least that's what Kati and I did.  I never thought that I could love a country more after Spain, until I got to Italy.  I'm pretty sure that I want to live there one day.  Well we had tried to make plans over and over with a whole bunch of different people, but no one really knew what they wanted to do, so Kati and I decided to go on our own, that is, until we met up with Roby, Judy and Colby.  We all ventured to the train, which was a fun little hike from the port, but not too bad, and went to get our tickets.  Of course we had on our backpacks which made maneuvering through crowds that much easier, but the lines to get tickets for the train were out of control.  After a long sweaty wait, and a confusing Italian ticket machine later, we all decided to get a bottle of wine for the ride to Roma. 
        The train was really kind of nice, air conditioning and everything, and we got to see a bunch of the country side, which apparently is very poor in Italy.  Upon arriving to Termini station, we did not have a plan of any sort, but all we knew was that we were very hungry.  We walked down a bunch of little streets, where we think was the Chinatown of Rome, and finally stumbled upon a little hole in a wall pizza and calzone shop.  The man cut me a piece after I motioned to him I wanted something smaller than the piece he was ready to cut and I could not believe have unbelievable the pizza was.  The people who had told me it was good did not lie at all.  It was the best pizza I think that I had in all of Rome!  Finally after we were all full, we got on the subway, which I managed to master in the 3 days I was there, and we headed to St. Peters Square.  I guess I had not realized how amazingly huge it was, but I was in complete awe.  It was absolutely gorgeous and enormous, I didn't know where to look first.  The line to get into the basilica seemed really intimidating, but it actually moved really quickly and only took us about a half an hour to get into.  When we stepped in for the first time, Colby and I looked at each other and we could instantly tell what we were both feeling.  I had goose bumps and almost thought I was going to cry, because it was so incredible.  We walked around for about an hour taking pictures, and admiring the beauty, when we looked up and realized that you could some how get to the top of the copula.  We figured out quickly how to do this, and paid the five euro to get up.  We walked up over 350 stairs just to get to the ledge that was in the inside of the basilica, which allowed us to look down and see everything from a different view.  After that, and what might have been some of the scariest minutes of my life, we managed to clime the rest of the 800 stairs to the top of the copula, which over looked the entire city.  The stairs wound around and around and the walls tilted to fit the circular shape, which only made the climb that much scarier.  Finally when we got to the top, I was able to put aside my fear of heights and look over at the most gorgeous site, the entire city of Rome, and St. Peter's Square from hundreds of feet in the air.  It was absolutely breathtaking, and I think despite all of the stairs, we were all really really happy that we had done it.  We stayed up there for a while, and eventually came down, so that we could move onto the next site, because Colby, Judy and Roby really only had that day in Rome before they left for Venice and Florence.  When we were leaving, we saw these crazy storm clouds coming in, and this insane lightening, but it hadn't started to rain yet.  We thankfully caught the bus right before the skies opened up, and when we got off, we ran into a little cafe to get something to eat once again.  After that, we walked out to try to find the Colosseum, because apparently it was really close to where we were, but there seemed to be so much commotion, we had to stop.  As we crossed the street, about 9 police cars surrounded the island that we were on in the middle of the road, and that was when we could see a protest coming.  We weren't really sure what it was about, but we had to get to the other side of the street, so as the massive group of people passed, shouting things in Italian, we joined in with them.  We think that it was a social security protest, but we really weren't sure, because the police man that we asked, answered us in Italian. 
        After videoing our presence in the protest, we finally got the directions to the Colosseum, and started walking, where we passed the Roman Forum on the way.  We stopped to take some pictures there, but as soon as the Colosseum was in sight, I needed to get a picture with it.  It was so amazing to see a site that I had only heard about and seen pictures of, because it was most definitely more impressive in real life.  We didn't get a chance to go in, because it was closed, but we did a really good walk around, and got onto the metro to try and find another group of girls that were staying at the hostel that Colby and them had already booked.  Kati and I tagged along, hopping that they would have a few extra beds to spare.  When we got to the original hostel, exhausted from carrying our backpacks all day, and in desperate need of a shower, they told us that their bathroom was broken and that they had arranged another hostel that the girls were already at.  We were all a bit frustrated but walked the extra 8 blocks to the Chinese ghetto, or so it seemed.  We found some SASers there, after we checked in, but they did not have any extra beds.  We didn't really freak out, because the woman seemed like a crack whore who didn't really pay any attention, so we all went upstairs, took showers and got ready to go out that night.  After some drinks at the hostel, we ventured out for something to do, and stumbled upon a sweet bar crawl.  It was only 5 euro for the next 3 bars and we got a free shot with each, so we were pretty excited.  The boys and Kati got shirts to remember the experience.   We had a lot of fun, but towards the end of the night, we were at a club, and Colby made friends with the guys that ran the crawl, and they gave him some free shots.  Well that's really enough said, because he got pretty drunk and we had to take him him.  Roby and I were going to go try and find the Trevi fountain, because they were leaving really early in the morning, but we had to help Kati get Colby back to the hostel.  On the way back in the cab, we ran into Judy, who had gone out with her other friends, and she joined us in our adventures back to the Trevi fountain.  Well we got in the right bus, going the wrong way, and after about an hour we realized we weren't turning around and had to get off and wait for the bus going back the other way.  It was certainly an adventure, 4am, and we had to get up at 7:30, so that they could catch the train to Pisa.  We finally all got to bed, 5 people in 3 singles, and went to sleep.
        In the morning, Kati and I woke up with everyone and got ready and left so that they hostel people wouldn't know we had all stayed the night.  It was really early and we just really wanted a coffee.  We walked across the street into a cafe, where we were greeted by this very friendly waiter, who insisted on kissing our cheeks and hands over and over, while telling us how beautiful we looked.  Of course we were still in last night's makeup and looked like a hot mess, but he didn't really seem to notice.  He also offered to take us on a personal tour of Rome when he got off work.  We were flattered but told him that we were going to meet up with our boyfriends later so that he would leave us alone for a little while.  After we only spent 3 euros on our coffee, compliments to the waiter who was in love with us, we ventured to find the Trevi fountain.  It took some skill, and some awesome map reading abilities, but we eventually stumbled across it.  It was relatively uncrowded, which was really nice because it is always super crowded in all the pictures.  Kati and I made wishes and were still hoping that they come true :)  We ran into the nurse and her husband from the ship and walked with them down to the Pantheon, which was also really beautiful.  We had to get something to eat after that because we were starving.  We ate pizza again at a small cafe, and took a break from carrying our backpacks, which was sweet.
        We had seen pretty much everything that we had wanted to, and we decided to see the Spanish Steps quickly and then head over to the Villa Borghese.  There were tons of shops along the street to get to the Spanish Steps, which kind of reminded me of 5th Avenue in Manhattan, sporting Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton, which we clearly could not afford.  We walked to the Villa Borghese after seeing a bunch of SASers at the steps, and we decided to take a nap, because we were just exhausted.  After a nice nap in the park, and getting to talk to my parents on the phone, we decided to call Josh to see where he was and to find a hostel near his apartment for the night.  Well apparently Rome was very full that night, so all the hostels were booked, my phone was dead, we couldn't figure out how to work the pay phones, and Kati's phone wouldn't dial Josh's number so we freaked out.  I finally got a hold of him and he gave us the directions to get to his apartment, where we could get a room for the night.  It worked out really well and turned out to be less expensive than we expected, which was really nice.  We got a sweet apartment, took a really long shower, and took a nap. 
        We finally woke up, started getting ready and I hadn't heard from Josh so I went to find Ruby and Christie, which was really cool to see them.  I finally met up with Josh and we went over to celebrate Sammy D's 21st birthday in his room for a while, until we could go out to the club.  I was so happy to get to see everyone in Rome, it was so much fun.  They were going to La Maison, one of the hottest clubs in Italy for the night to celebrate the end of their summer program, and the plethora of birthdays that night.  It ended up being really fun, we'll keep it at that. We got back to the apartment pretty late, and went to bed and in the morning, more afternoon, we got up and got an amazing Italian lunch of antipasto, spaghetti, and veal.  It was all really delicious.  The only thing that we didn't get a chance to see was the Vatican Museum and the Sistine chapel, so we headed over there.  The museum was really cool, and the Sistine chapel was really beautiful.  It was really funny because you aren't supposed to talk in the chapel or take pictures, and there was an official shusher, which shushed the people every minute or so.  After that, we met back up with Josh, and had to grab our stuff to head back to Civiteveccia to catch the boat to go to Naples.  After a long train ride, and some more pizza before getting back, we arrived back home to the MV Explorer to crash.  We were so tired and were glad to be home.
        Rome was not what I had expected it to be at all.  Of course I knew there was tons and tons of history, which was incredible to see, but a lot of people spoke English, which was really nice.  I didn't get to learn as much Italian as I had hoped, which I think maybe put a little bit of a damper on the experience, but over it was absolutely unbelievably amazing.  I couldn't believe that with not having a plan, we were able to see everything that we wanted to see and did everything that we wanted to do.  I was able to basically backpack through Italy for three days, eat some amazing food, meet some really awesome people, and experience an unbelievable country, which I will remember forever.