Amo L'Italia!

As promised, I'm updating about my time in the beautiful country of Italy!

Day One: On Tuesday night (as in, not yesterday but the one before that) Megan, Tim and I headed out to Meghan's house where we took a short and rather uncomfortable nap before the car taking us to Gatwick airport picked us up at 3:30 in the morning (Wednesday) to get to the airport on time. Unlike American airports we had to wait until the very last minute to know which gate we had to be at, and as soon as the gate went up everyone rushed their way to it.

We landed in Fiumencio airport in Rome and packed a LOT into our first day! We were picked up at the airport by our hostel, and after a 15 minute ride we were greeted at a lovely little campsite and shown our cabin. We didn't stick around for long though! We took their complimentary shuttle to the train station, where we bought day passes (4 euro for unlimited access to the trains, buses and metro!) and hopped on the train to the center of Rome. Our first stop was to grab some food - pizza of course! It's the only food you can actually afford in Rome anyway, everything's about 7.50 euros and to put that into perspective, that's about $12 or more depending on the exact exchange rate. Right after that we headed out to the Colosseum! Meghan B. had already been there and Tim wasn't too keen on going in so Megan S. and I paid the entrance fee (surprisingly only 12 euro) and even got one of those audio tours so we could know what was going on. It was EXACTLY as you'd imagine the Colosseum to look like and I learned a lot from the audio. For example, they had trap doors in the middle of the arena so that they could make it look like the beasts and gladiators were coming out from the center of the floor! And that the arena was actually made of wood covered with sand - the word for sand in Latin? "Arena"!! Blew my mind! I did have quite a hard time picturing how the seating was back in the day but apparently assigned seating and seating numbers were invented for the Colosseum, or that's the story anyway. It was absolutely money well spent! You have to grab all the opportunities that come your way! There were a bunch of guys dressed as gladiators outside the Colosseum but Meghan B. warned us not to go up for a picture because they would charge you for the picture even if you used your own camera! Lame!

After our self-guided tour Megan S and I met back up with Meghan and Tim and headed over to the Vatican. It's really strange to consider that the Vatican is it's own country, city, whatever it is because you're just walking long and suddenly you're there and not technically in Rome anymore! St. Peter's Square is really beautiful and we got some wonderful pictures as the sun was beginning to set and dusk settled in. We got to go into the Basilica - which was absolutely mind-blowing. I've never seen so much gold-leaf in my entire life! It was a little much for me as a church, but as a historical site it was out of this world, with works by Michaelangelo and the like. I was also fascinated by the fact that a lot of the decor was a bit of an illusion. If you look up you see an inscription on the wall that looks maybe a foot high, but in actually it's SIX FEET tall, as in, each letter is six feet tall! That's taller than I am! And if you keep looking up, the windows above that (that look really small) are actually even bigger than that!

After the Basilica we wandered our way through the little alleyways and suddenly we found ourselves at the Trevi fountain! It was absolutely gorgeous in the dark, because it was all lit up. We grabbed our first gelato of the trip (Nutella flavored!) and took a seat at the fountain to rest our feet and gaze at the history in front of our eyes. The fountain must be wonderful in the daylight, but at night it's absolutely magical. We each turned our backs to the fountain, made a wish and threw in our coins as tradition mandates. According to tradition, if you throw a coin in the fountain this way it guarantees that you will come back to Rome someday. I certainly hope that's true!

When we got back to our cabin that night I couldn't have been more happy to change into my PJs and snuggle into bed. Despite the noisy high-schoolers on site, I fell right to sleep!

Day Two: The next day was just as packed as the first one. There's so much to see and do in Roma! Our first stop was the Vatican museum (as it had been closed by the time we got there the day before) where we got to see works by artists I've heard of all my life and the Sistene chapel of course, where they had a guy whose job was solely to shush everyone! Obviously it didn't work that well and was just irritating really. Poor guy. After the Vatican we headed to a bakery we had seen once when we had gotten lost, outside of the touristy area of Rome. It was AMAZING! There were so many delicious-looking options that I had quite a time making a choice, but they were really cheap! So we each got a sandwich and took our little lunches to the Spanish Steps, which I IMMEDIATELY fell in love with. I can't explain why but I could have sat there for hours and hours just watching people pass.

After the Spanish Steps we headed to the Pantheon which is the oldest Pagan worship building still standing in Europe and where the artist Raphael is buried. After that we made our way to Piazza Navona where dozens of artists had set up little shops all around, either selling their paintings or offering to paint/draw tourists. Some of them were doing caricatures but I was most amazed by the artists that could put out absolutely stunning and realistic sketches of people in 20 minutes. After the Piazza we had succeeded in seeing everything we had wanted to get in so we wandered around, slowly making our way to the castle to see the bridge with the secret passageway that the Pope used to use to get from the Vatican to the castle when he was under attack.

Day Three: We woke up at 4:30 AM to get ready in a flash and meet our taxi at 5AM to take us back to Fiumicio airport to take us to Venice. I have never had a faster car ride in my life! The driver got us to the airport in 15 minutes and was FLYING down the empty streets - scary but exhilarating at the same time! But we got through the frighteningly simple airport security quickly and the plane ride was normal, getting to the hostel was a bit tricky because we couldn't figure out where the get our tickets for the bus to get us there. We knew WHICH bus to take and WHERE to get it - but where do we actually get tickets?? Finally I asked a French tourist who had just gotten one and she pointed to a tiny drugstore across the street. Who knew? Haha! Our hostel was another campground and it was like it's own little town complete with restaurant, pizzeria, and supermarket. We were in what was basically a nice four-person trailer with two rooms. The bathroom wasn't right in there with us, but was only a few feet away from our door. We bought 3-day water shuttle passes to get us to the main island of Venezia for only 25 euro. The ride over the water took only 20 minutes and I've never seen such beautiful blue water in my life! It definitely didn't even feel like a 20 minute ride. Venice is filled with wonderful little alleyways and water alleyways and the best way to explore it is to put away your map and just get lost for a while, and only take the map back out when you need to get back! We found a free mini-exhibition on Vivaldi where we got to see a lot of really old instruments (mostly violins, violas and the like) and got to learn a bit about Vivaldi himself, who was born and lived in Venice.

We spent the day in Venice, wandering around, eating gelato and little plates of pasta until we decided to head back to the hostel for dinner at the pizzeria where they had GREAT pizza for a really reasonable price. Not to mention the staff were all extremely nice and smiling. At one point in the night we opened our door and there was a cat at the doorstep! He followed us to brush our teeth and I automatically named him Mario, which he responded to, and followed us around for the rest of our stay there! :) So cute! He would even come inside the trailer after some coaxing and lie with us on our beds and snuggle. At first I was a little worried that he might not have the appropriate shots but he looked well taken care of, not like a stray, and we found out later that the owners of the campsite take care of the cats on site and feed them. For the first time on the trip we got to sleep in as much as we wanted to, so I sleep a full 12 hours! It was great, because I fell asleep at 9:00 so it's not even like I was getting up late and starting the day late, we still had plenty of time!

Day Four: We thought about going to the island of Murano on this day but our budgets were getting a bit tight at this point and there was no guarantee that we would even be able to look into the workshops anyway. And much of Venice is filled with Murano glass anyway. So we spent the whole day just wandering around and getting lost in Venice, taking pictures of the pretty little alleyways and silly pictures of ourselves. We wandered aimlessly and found ourselves at the famous Rialto bridge, which we crossed to eat lunch. I had some delicious mushroom tortellini! After lunch we went out to find a specific gelato place we had seen earlier which turned into a fun game because trying to get back to a specific place in Venice is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We were very proud of ourselves when we DID find it and got a four scoop gelato in waffle cones! Yum!

That night we ate at the pizzeria on the campsite again and I discovered my new favorite pizza: tomato, cheese, garlic, basil, salt and pepper. Mmmm! Also that night we discovered that one of the cats had had kittens and they were just beginning to wander around everywhere! SO adorable! I'm such a sucker for cats.

Day Five: This day was another day filled of wanderings but we had set this day aside to shop for ourselves and for friends and family back home. So instead of going past the shops we went in tons of them! I got myself a murano glass heart necklace... but I'm not telling what I got all of ya'll! Nice try though! ;) We didn't stay too long in the city and headed back early to our campsite for dinner and to play 500 Rummy in the pizzeria. The perfect end to a perfect trip.. because I won! haha! But seriously it was really fun and I think the four of us got much closer as friends.

Day Six: We woke up and packed our stuff up to get to the shuttle we had booked for 8 euro a piece to get us back to Marco Polo airport. The shuttle was something we hadn't planned on but it was SO much less stressful than trying to take the unpredictable public transportation back. We got there in 20 minutes and were back in Bognor Regis by three in the afternoon.

Italy is a place that I'd always dreamed of going to, who would have thought that I would be able to fulfill such a dream so early in my life. I've been truly blessed and I really hope I can go back again relatively soon, hopefully with the family! <3

If you want to check out pictures I made them public on my Facebook site, if you can't see them let me know!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=335981&id=610235132

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=336080&id=610235132