Rome

Well we flew on April Fool's Day and without a joke it was a nice flight; pretty packed and everyone spoke Italian. My thought as we were in the air...what are we getting ourselves into? We arrived in Rome without a problem, got on a bus to bring us to the city. Well...who would have thought it would be in the upper 60s outside, possibly 80 inside the bus, be an hour away from the city and have to drive on all these twisty, curvy roads going up and down hills; can you say car sick?

After about an hour we finally made it to the train station where the directions told us to go and then it was up to us to find this hostel, with the limited amount of directions that were given. So after walking around for a bit, we finally asked a taxi driver, who very nicely explained in some broken English where the hostel was. And I have to say running on 4 hours of sleep, hungry, and exhausted I am pretty proud of us for understanding this men and finding our hostel! A 10 minute walk later (yes our hostel was that close) we made it to the place where we were staying, climbed the three flights of stairs that literally went straight up, and checked in. The hostel was okay, very Italy like and definitely a down grade from the JetPak (Berlin) and the Wombats (Munich), but it would do for two nights.We went to bed pretty much after we got there because the next day was going to require a lot of brain power and a ton of walking!

The Vatican

So we woke up Saturday morning and Lex left to go meet her brother at his hotel. It was really nice to have Anthony with us for the last few places; having someone who brought new excitement for being in Europe definitely kept us going. We met them at The Vatican, where we probably stood in line for only 10 minutes. Of course when we got inside, you have a choice to go to the Cupola, or go inside the church. Well, we decided it would be fun to go to the Cupola...! Hmm, not exactly what I was expecting...literally the walls slanted in, the hallway got narrower and narrower and then to make matters a little worse there weren't any windows, it was 70 degrees and a ton of people. Can you say claustrophobia? My legs were shaking, I was sweating and all I wanted to do was get to the top, take one picture and get back down.

View from up top the Cupola

With that said, once I got to the top it was such a gorgeous view that I didn't want to rush it; even though there were so so many people up there. You could barely walk around. Anyways, after climbing what seemed like forever we made our way back down and went inside the church.

Mass

 

View up top the Cupola

          
The church is absolutely the coolest thing to see. When I walked in I was just amazed by the whole thing, you could spend so many hours just walking around and looking at everything. With all the different sculptures, paintings, places to pray, places to hear the mass, the ceiling it was a lot to take in. The nice part about being inside was it was so much cooler than it was outside.

Inside the Vatican

After waking around for a few hours we decided it was time to get lunch and then head to The Sistine Chapel. Now, the only thing I really cared about seeing was the famous painting of the fingers touching. So we get into this building and wind our ways through it, going from one room to the next, because you can't just walk right to Michelangelo's ceiling painting of the nine scenes from the Old Testament. But of course, we finally made it and were even able to snag a few photos. It was pretty cool just to look up and see all the detail. Who in their right mind would every want to lie on his/her back and paint it is beyond me, but it was really neat to see.

Yes...I really took that photo

The Colosseum

From there we decided to make our way to the Colosseum, which was on the other side of the city. So thank you to whoever decided to take the metro because I am pretty sure if we had decided to walk we wouldn't have the energy to walk around the Colosseum once we got there. The metro ride was only five minutes and it dropped us right outside the Colosseum. It was so cool to see and totally made us feel we were in the movie Gladiator. Interesting fact about the Colosseum is there used to be an outer wall all a way around it, but an earthquake knocked down part of it.

Inside the Colosseum

Where the gladiators stayed

The Trevi Fountain

After taking a few pictures, we got some gelato and then sat on the hill outside of the Colosseum and just relaxed for a bit. That night was probably the first time we were in bed before 12 the whole trip and it felt amazing. Sunday we woke up and went to the Trevi Fountain and The Pantheon. The Trevi Fountain was really cool, the water looked so blue and yes I throw in some change for good luck, hopefully it will pay off! The Pantheon wasn't all that special to see, but of course we took pictures any ways. Then came probably the worse decision of all time, lets just walk around Rome until our train at 2:30. Hmm, so we started walking, would get to a corner and choose a direction and keep doing that until we realized that we pretty much walked in a zig-zag all the way back to the Vatican, which is on the other side of the city. In 70 degree weather, which is warm to 5 girls all coming from Scotland and 1 boy who came from New York where it snowed the day before, we were all sweating and didn't realize how long it would take us to walk back. I would say the choice to walk around made us all tired for the rest of the trip...yes we were exhausted for the next four days! 

The Pantheon

After a long day, we got on the train and headed to Florence, where we would be greeted by our friends from RWU who are studying their for the semester. Alexa and I were really excited to see them. I still think it is really cool that even though we are abroad we still can see our friends! The best part about the train was not only were we not on an airplane, we could sit for a whole hour without moving! I might be young, but I just didn't have the energy anymore to walk; so the train was definitely a nice break!