All Rome-d out!

Hello, faithful readers! Today you are in for a very long post…4 days worth of stuff! Rome was amazing, but as the title of the post says, I’m definitely “all Rome-d out.” So enjoy this big post made up of 4 mini-posts! And leave me comments! I like comments! And emails, lots of emails!!!!!! =)

-----June 29, 2010-----

Early this morning, we docked in Civitavecchia, Italy! We arrived and were cleared earlier than expected, so we were able to leave the ship at 0930. Steven and I picked up our passports and were off to the hectic train station to buy our tickets to Rome. Thus began the first hiccup of our trip. The ticket we bought said our train left at 10:30 (they run every half hour), and it was currently 9:45. This little tiny train station had no signs whatsoever, and the ticket didn’t say where the train was or anything. We asked a guy who worked there and he pointed to a track around the corner, so we went to that train. There were other SAS students on the train who said that it was the 10:30 train. Well, the train started pulling out at 10! We were officially on the wrong train, but thankfully no one came around to check tickets and we sat across from a group of German people who kept trying to talk to us in German when we told them we only spoke English. Anyway, after the 1.5 hour train ride, we made it to Rome and made our way to the hostel. We arrived at the hostel to find two other SASers checking in too! The man who showed us to our room, Gino, was extremely nice and joked around a lot (when we asked him if we could get air conditioning, he jokingly said “no, you must die in the heat!”) I was so surprised how secure the hostel was. We had 3 keys: one for the door to the street since it is locked at night, one to get into our hallway (there are 2 rooms in the hall) and another to get into our room. Talk about security! We have a teeny bathroom with a teeny shower stall, but it’s a nice room. When we got in, the temperature was 28 degrees C, which is 85 degrees F! Air conditioning cost us 5 euros per night, which we immediately got.
        After dropping off our bags, we went across the street to a restaurant called La Famiglia. Steven ordered cannelloni, I ordered lasagna, and we each had half of each others’ meal. They were so good! After lunch, we trekked to the Spanish Steps. It took us a while to figure out how to navigate…there aren’t signs on every street corner telling you where you are! We made it to the steps, where we were harassed by a man selling flowers and we filled up our water bottles at the public fountain (which is totally safe, clean, potable water). Our next stop was the Trevi Fountain. It was flooded with tourists and we didn’t have any small coins to throw in so we decided to go back later. Next we went to the Pantheon, half of which is now under construction (Boo!). We were too late to go inside since it closed early (today, of course, was a Roman Catholic holiday) so we plan to return tomorrow. Our final stop on the little tour was the Piazza Navona, a piazza with beautiful Bernini fountains AND where I had my first gelato 4 years ago. The place I had gelato was gone! It was renamed and is now more of a restaurant with only 10 flavors of gelato as opposed to the dozens that were there before. Bummer!!! We walked down the piazza to another gelateria—Steven got chocolate chip, and I got Nutella (with real chunks of Nutella—yum!!). We then started working our way back to the hostel, stopping at many of the shops along the way. We also stopped at the Trevi Fountain again to throw our coins in so as to ensure a speedy return to Rome. We were SO tired and hot by the time we made it back to the hostel, and we went for an “early” dinner (7pm) at another nearby restaurant, Babbo’s.  Our Italian interport student told us we HAD to try mozzarella di bufala (buffalo mozzarella) and pasta amatriciana, so we did both!  Our antipasti was parma ham with mozzarella di bufala and foccacia bread. Yum!! Then Steven got the amatriciana and I ordered gnocchi with shrimp and tomatoes. Although I don’t mind getting shrimp with their heads on, I’m getting tired of peeling them! When we got back to the hostel, I took advantage of the free internet and our now-18 degree room. =)

-----June 30, 2010-----

        Today was such a long day!! We walked all the way from our hostel to the Circus Maximus, where chariot races were once held. It was very disappointing—there are only a couple of ruins amidst construction vehicles, piles of dirt, and modern fences. They are apparently trying to excavate or restore it or something. We then walked back toward the Colosseum, contemplating the Arch of Constantine for a while. We had tickets for a guided tour through the interior of the Colosseum, but we couldn’t find the entrance! We walked ALL the way around and finally saw it and started our tour. The inside was amazing—our guide showed us pictures that recreated how it looked. They’ve actually started to rebuild some of it to show what it used to look like. I took quite a few nice panoramic pictures inside! After the Colosseum, we started to head to the Campo de Fiori, where our interport student said there was a market. Most of the shops were already closing up, but we picked up 2 little bottles of limoncello (a type of alcoholic lemonade-y drink). We grabbed lunch at a little pizzeria (the restaurants on the side streets are best!) and got 2 pizzas to share. One had cheese and thinly-sliced ham, and the other had beefsteak, parmesean, and rocket (which we learned was a type of salad green).  Both were delicious! After lunch, we stopped at a gelateria for our 2nd gelato of Italy! I mixed coffee and chocolate while Steven mixed chocolate and chocolate chip. Yum-o!
Our next stop was the Pantheon, and thankfully it was open this time. We marveled at the huge dome and the sculptures inside. Steven was just amazed at how big the place was! At this point, we were tired, hot, and sweaty, but we decided to head down to the Roman Forum. We wasted half an hour searching for the entrance, and once we found it, it was too late to get an audiotour. So we used a tour book that Bridget had loaned me (thanks, Bridget!) and did the tour ourselves. We didn’t get through all of the forum before it closed, so we may return tomorrow! We headed back to the hostel for showers and to eat dinner. We ate at La Famiglia again, except this time Steven got pasta carbonara and I got meat-filled tortellini with peas and mushrooms. So good! For dessert, I had the most delicious tiramisu and Steven had some tasty chocolate gelato. Tomorrow we are checking out of our hostel and heading to the Sistine Chapel! Oh, and limoncello is delicious! =)

-----July 1, 2010-----

Today definitely had it’s ups and downs. This morning, we checked out of our hostel and left our bags in the lobby. We grabbed the metro to Vatican City, and passed by the extremely long line for the Vatican Museums because we bought tickets online beforehand. Hooray for being prepared!  We walked through the many rooms of the museums, enjoying the Egyptian room the most with its REAL mummies! There was also a room full of animal sculptures, full of horses and dogs and a big camel. Our main goal was the Sistine Chapel, and even though we kept following the signs to the chapel, we were lead through an extremely long maze of rooms and hallways and stairs (I think we went up and down stairs about 5 times) before we finally made it. The artwork was absolutely amazing, we just stood there and marveled at the murals for a while. We understandably weren’t allowed to take pictures, but some awesome gems of individuals were sneaking pictures (some with flash). Steven and I were surprised with how small the chapel was, it was just one rectangular room, but Michelangelo’s artwork covered the majority of the walls and ceiling. We made our way to the exit and had some lunch just outside St. Peter’s Square. I had a little pizza while Steven had a “tour of Italy” including lasagna, pasta amatriciana, and ravioli. Italy is all about carbs, carbs, carbs!!! The place we ate also had gelato, so I got pistachio and Steven got a mix of hazelnut and tiramisu (and he liked it!!!). We caught the metro back to the train station (the two metro lines in Rome intersect at the station) and then got on the other line to go to the Forum. Rome’s metro is so dirty and crowded—they literally shove as many people as possible into a train and then they are smushed up against the windows and doors when the doors close. It’s scary! We made it to the stop in one piece, and it was then that I realized that I left our ticket back in the hostel (our ticket for the Colosseum also includes admission to the Forum and Palatine Hill for 2 days). Ugh!! So I went to buy two more tickets while Steven got the audio tour, and we began our long tour of the forum and Palatine Hill. We tried to follow the map that they had given us with the guide, but there was so much construction going on that the map was not accurate and we either missed stops or weren’t looking at the right things. Not to mention that once we got to Palatine Hill, there were so many different streets that we turned down the wrong one and got completely lost. The numbers for the audioguide were only on the map and weren’t marked in the actual area that we had to be in, so we had no idea where we had to be. We decided to skip the last couple stations and head back. We grabbed our bags from the hostel and went to the train station to head back to Civitavecchia. Now, I know that we are in Italy and that Italian is the main language, but I didn’t expect there to be such a lack of English! We went to a little kiosk thing to buy our tickets, and even though we pressed English as our language, a lot of the important stuff was in Italian (who knew there were so many different train tickets?). We asked someone for help, but everyone is in a hurry and no one would help us. Finally, we found a man who helped us work the machine even though he didn’t speak much English. We got our ticket and asked him which platform we had to go to, he said 15. The train was leaving in about 20 minutes, so we started our walk to platform 15. No train there. We asked someone and he said the train to Civitavecchia was on platform 28, not 15. Platform 28 is EXTREMELY far from 15, and we only had 10 minutes, so we basically ran half a mile to the other platform. The train at 28 was actually going to the airport, not Civitavecchia, but luckily the train next to it at 29 was our train (or so we thought). Once we were on the train, we realized that this was a train that was leaving 20 minutes later than our ticket said, so we were yet again not on the right train. The freaking ticket was all in Italian, and there are no signs anywhere! Nowhere on the ticket did it say 28 or 29. So we thought we could just stay on this train like we did on the first train, but a lady came around and started checking tickets. The man in front of us apparently had the wrong ticket, and he was kicked off the train at the next stop. I became worried that we would be kicked off next, but thankfully she never came back and we finally made it back to Civitavecchia and the ship. I was so glad to see the ship!!!! We missed dinner, so we grabbed food from the pool deck and just enjoyed being on the ship, safe and sound. Tomorrow we go on a tour of the catacombs!

-----July 2, 2010-----

        I was so thankful that today we had a full-day SAS trip because I didn’t have to deal with Roman public transportation. I fully enjoyed our hour drive into the city in an air-conditioned motorcoach! Our trip was called “unusual Rome and catacombs” and our first stop was at the catacombs. We walked down lots of stairs until we were about 20 meters underground. It was so nice and cool down there, I wish we could have explored for more than the 15 minutes we were there. Our guide showed us some of the main crypts and explained all of the writings on the walls and how the catacombs were built. Very cool! Apparently the catacombs were raided by Barbarians so many of the crypts were emptied or destroyed.  After the catacombs, we went to the Crypt of the Capuchin Friars. The crypt contained 5 little rooms decorated in human bones. Different bones covered the walls and ceilings in interesting patterns, and some bones were used to make chandeliers and altars. Most of the rooms had the hooded skeletons of Capuchin friars. They said that the bones were a “hymn to life.” I really enjoyed the visit, although it was a little creepy!
        After the crypt, we had almost 5 hours on our own to get lunch and explore the area. Since we just spent 3 full days in Rome and pretty much saw everything we wanted to see, we weren’t sure what to do. Rome’s Hard Rock Café was on the same street as the crypt, so we went there so I could buy a pin. We then decided to eat there (there’s only so many consecutive times you can have pizza or pasta). We had some delicious burgers!!! After lunch, we walked around the area, but since we had already walked around there, we got back to the meeting point an hour early and just sat there to wait for the bus. As amazing as Rome was, I was definitely ready to leave and go on to Naples!
        We are traveling to Naples overnight, and tomorrow morning we have a tour of Pompeii. That should be a lot of fun, although it ends at 1230 and we’re not sure what to do for the rest of the day. It may be a day of relaxing (or studying for our Global Studies midterm that is in 3 days!)