ITALY

Me encanta Italia! Love it! I want to go back asap. Warning: this will either be an extremely long blog, or I will do it in sections, in which case you will get to read the "Chapters of Rome" :)

My new Italian vocabulary (spelling might not be correct):

Grazie "Thank you"
Prego "You're welcome" "Go ahead" "Alright" etc etc. (They say this word for everything"
Dove e ... "Where is.."
Qui si dice? "How do you say?"
brutto "ugly"
Ciao "Hi" "bye"
Bella "Hi" "beautiful" or "Hi beautiful"

Thursday night:

Megan and I left for the airport at 5:30, which involved the metro and then an hour long bus ride, because Ryanair is in Girona, not in Barcelona. Our flight left (on time, thank goodness..I have heard horror stories about Ryanair) and we got to Rome early, at 10:35 or so. However, our bus heading from the airport to Termini Station in the center of Rome did not leave till 11:30. We got to Termini at midnightish, and only had a few minutes walk to our hostel. The hostel is called Alessandro's Downtown, and is in a great position in the city. We were in a female, 8 bed dorm, got continental breakfast, plus a free pasta dinner (though only on Friday), and clean blankets, sheets and pillows. All of this for only 12euro a night. I was pleased. We settled down, and were up the next morning at 7am with a full day ahead of us.
Friday:
We grabbed breakfast and put our things in the luggage room. While in there, the man who checked us in the night before came in and told us we shouldn't be out at night alone and if we ran into any trouble, to call the hostel up and he would be on duty. Nice of him, but we are adults and can take care of ourselves...We then went to Termini to get a day metro pass. Who shows up while we are buying our tickets but Alli, the hostel night worker. He tries to advise us on which ticket to get, and then proceeds to come with us onto the metro because he wants to show us around town. However, as we find out as we walk around with him, he has only been in Italy 10mos and is originally from Egypt. He doesn't have many friends, works every night, and hasn't visited hardly any of the sights in Rome. He didn't know the name of most everything we visited. Some tour guide..We finally got rid of him at noon. During that time, we visited the Spanish Steps (Trinita dei Monti)



which was pretty because there were no tourists there, then walked down to Piazza del Popolo (beautiful) and the Pincio for a nice overlook of the city. We got on the metro and went one stop over, then walked down to Palazzo di Giustizia (a huge, beautifully decorated parliament building) and some pretty churches. We saw the Ara Pacis from across the river. We then walked down the river front, which is yucky and ugly, BTW, to Castel Sant' Angelo.


We continued walking and saw the entrance to the Vatican City with St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. This was my favorite visit of the entire trip, because St. Peter's is SOOOO beautiful. I wish we would have taken a tour of the inside.



We walked the wall of the city for a while to get to a close metro, and took it back to Termini for the second half of our day. We went to eat lunch at a little cafe nearby, where we both had big bowls of pasta (me:ravioli, meg:gnocchi) that were delicious and cheap. After lunch, we started our second big walk of the day, down to the Colosseum and everything around it. We walked for a good 4 or 5 hours in the afternoon, and 4 in the morning. However, I still felt that Rome was a very accessible city and very walkable. In only one day, we walked around a majority of the big sights in Rome. Here are a list of things we saw Friday afternoon:

Colle Oppio
Domus Aurea
Colosseum
Arco di Costantino
the outside of a big area of ruins that you had to pay to get inside (Palatino and Areo di Tito)
Foro di Nerva
Foro di Augusto
Foro Traiano
Mercati Traianei
Colonna Traianei
Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II
Pantheon
Palazza Madama
Piazza Navona
Fontana di Trevi

yea...We saw some cute little streets while exploring the city, and grabbed a pastry to eat at the Pantheon (Mine was delicious, megan did not like hers). While walking to Trevi Fountain, we were cold and saw a streetside cafe with heated lights. We stopped to put our hands up to the light, and a man (who we now think was perhaps an owner) eating suggested we sit down. We told him no, thanks but we had plans for dinner, and he offered us a glass of champagne on the house. Well, how could we resist a glass of champagne at a cute, warm cafe in Italy? After enjoying it, we found him to say Grazie, and he kissed our fingers and told us to enjoy our time in Rome. We fell in love! We then walked to Trevi fountain, but stopped to enjoy some NUTELLA gelati (mmmm so delicious) and ate at the fountain. We threw a coin in the fountain, because the superstition is that if you throw a coin in the fountain, you will come back to Rome someday. Afterward, we headed back to the hostel for a free plate of pasta (wasn't very good but still food, and we were starving) and were in bed, exhausted, by 9pm. We had a reason: We needed to be up at 5am for our Saturday adventures!

To be continued...