(WARNING: It's a really long post & I'm going to add a few photos to it later..)
First day: Katie and I had to wake up at 2 a.m. to catch a 3 a.m. bus to Gatwick airport in order to be there on time for our 7 a.m. flight.
I always feel really horrible for those I ask to wake me up because I am the weirdest person to wake up. This time, Katie knocked and knocked, with no response. So she came into my room and said, "Janice, it's 2 a.m."
Because I had not slept in two days because of an essay due just the day before, I woke up still in my dream, and instead of just Katie in my room, there were people filling up the entire space around my bed.
I apparently said, forcefully, "What is the significance of 3 A. M.?!"
(haha, I know that looks weird, but I had to emphasize the "A" and "M" part)
And after a few minutes of waking up, we got up and were off to the bus stop, literally running there in order to make our bus. Good thing the bus area, Gloucester Green, is really close to our house.
The airports here apparently handle departures a bit differently than I am used to.
We arrived early to the airport, but there was not a gate assigned to our flight yet. We sat in this little waiting area for the gate number, but because I was sitting under an air conditioner and freezing, I decided to go get hot chocolate.. just as our gate popped up on the screen.
Katie and I ate breakfast until I happened to see "ROMA" flashing on the little television next to us. Our gate was boarding and closing in five minutes. The sign directing us to our gate told us to take 20 minutes to actually get there.
It had not even been 20 minutes since they announced the gate number. But that didn't matter.
Katie and I ran through Gatwick airport, on moving sidewalks, to get to our gate... in five minutes.
We only had to shove three elderly people, jump over two airport golf carts and knock down one coffee stand to do this, but it happened. And it was epic.
Little did we know, when the screen says *flashing* BOARDING, it really means 'take your time, because we'll actually be another 20 minutes.'
At least we made our plane.
Katie and I were knocked out on the plane. We arrived in Rome at 11 a.m., hopped on a bus to the city centre, and then hopped on one of those little touristy double-decker buses.
Our first stop was the Colosseum. Actually, no, it was a little restaurant near the Colosseum.
We had mushroom pizza, of course, and the waiter stole Katie's money because he thought she was tipping him like a stupid American, but we waited around for another half hour for her change, and nothing..
So we headed over to the Colosseum, where Katie and I spent a good majority of the day. We did the usual--took pictures of ourselves in every alcove of the Colosseum.
The history behind the Colosseum is absolutely incredible--there is nothing else like it. I only wish I had seen Gladiator beforehand, haha.
We saw the Roman ruins that surrounded the Colosseum but then quickly headed off to the La Bocca della Verità so that I could be like Audrey Hepburn.
Then we headed off to Trevi Fountain (where I made the longest wish of my life), the Pantheon (such an amazingly beautiful building.. well, inside), the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (it's hard to believe something so grand is just sitting there in the middle of the city), and so many other amazing landmarks.
By the end of the day, we were extremely tired and just wanted to go sleep. Our hostel was possibly the cutest hostel on the face of the planet. Well, it is the cutest out of the two I've stay in throughout my life.
It was a little village, so Katie and I shared a bungalow. There was an area for campers--real campers. There was a little store, a disco, a restaurant, an outdoor pool, everything. It was very cute, so if you ever go to Rome and want to stay somewhere cheap, I know where you can stay.
Second day: It was Sunday, so we wanted to go to the Vatican City to be blessed by the Pope, but the line for the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel was about as long as the lines in Disney World. It was ridiculous, and pushy women were behind Katie and I, grabbing our butts and pushing us forward as if that would somehow get them entrance to the museum before everyone else.
I nearly hyperventilated until Katie gave me her iPod with James on it. We met a little British couple who we really liked. The most important question the girl asked us was: "Do you watch Prison Break?"
After we made it through hours of walking through the Vatican Museum (how many tapestries can one girl stand in her lifetime? I mean, really...), we finally made it to the Sistine Chapel. We did, however, pass a few pieces of modern Pope art before we got there, and I really liked those.
The Sistine Chapel is absolutely amazing, aside from the fact that there were about a thousand people squishing into the tiny, hot chapel. Combine that with standing in one place while looking up the entire time and my body could not handle it. I decided to faint on Katie, so we moved to these little plastic seats on the side of the chapel. We stayed there until closing time, when the little guards had to literally force us out.
Katie knows the Bible like the back of her hand, so we've been talking about the stories in the Bible lately and because of that, the Sistine Chapel just meant so much more than it would have earlier.
After we left the Vatican City, we headed over to my last Audrey Hepburn stop: The Spanish Steps. Little did I know, this would be a tragic visit.
Katie kept saying how funny it would be if we ended up seeing The Spanish Steps from the top so we would not have to walk up them. We somehow managed this (but later ended up going back up the stairs anyway).
The area around the Spanish Steps and then Trevi fountain were my two favorite places in Rome. It was just so beautiful around the Steps.. so beautiful, it seems, that people tend to forget what they're doing and spill clear champagne on the steps.
I was walking down the steps trying to be Audrey Hepburn (sans the gelato).. until I slipped on some champagne on the bottom. I fell so hard on the steps that I thought I broke my hands.. I screamed and started crying, and then I started looking for Katie who was out taking pictures, but I couldn't see her, so I just literally started crawling out of the crowd that was yelling at me to "be careful" in two million different languages (and not in an endearing way).
Katie saw me, helped me up, and I just kept screaming that I needed to get to a restroom.
Well, it was Sunday so everything was closed... except for our beloved McDonald's.
We walk into the McDonald's and got confused. There was a cafe and a gelato place that led into this cute little eating area.. we kept going further.. it was a completely decked out McDonald's. So weird. This is the second one of it's kind that we saw.
They were playing the Jonas Brothers, so that made me a bit happier. I went to the bathroom and started cleaning off my leggings.. and to my surprise, all this blood started to cover my paper towel. So I proceeded to feel nauseous and fall in the bathroom floor again because a cleaning lady decided that that would be a perfect time to mop the floor.
My knee was skinned.. the EXACT reason I don't ride bikes. Then I looked at my toe. Three of my toes had HUGE gashes in them. My big toe had HALF A NAIL. And my baby pinky toe was completely broken and shoved into the next toe. Oh, and just the other day, my middle toe's nail decided to fall off, too (but I covered it up with bright red nail polish.. don't worry).
After I cleaned myself up, I begged Katie to let me go back to the stairs so that I could take a proper picture of myself at the stairs.
We headed back to the hostel to get ready for the next day and our trip to Volterra.
More about Volterra later! I have to go write a few essays now..
If you want to look at my Facebook galleries of photos that accompany my Rome stories, go here:
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