Thursday, June 23, 2011

Roma! (finally)

People, I know... I'm slacking hardcore. I don't een want to think about how many countries behind I am.

First things first, I just want to profess my thankfulness for prayers answered in regards to my Eurail pass troubles. After the trouble I had in Paris, my pass has not been checked at all. The seat reservations that we made were sufficient proof and I went along on my happy way galavanting around Europe. It was such a stress relief.

Okay so we left Nice early early in the morning. We were worried that we were goig to have to make quite the trek down to the tram because te hostel shuttle didn't start until 8 and our train was leaving wayy before that. However, we ran into our pony-tailed, South African, security guard friend the night before, explained our troubles and he, with a charming smile, said that he would gladly drive us all the way to the station in the morning because he was going to be up. So off Jess, Britt and I were to...

Roma! - So our first train stopped in Genova, which let me tell you... Does not have that much going on right around the train station. But we had a two hour lay over and were super hungry so we ventured out to find some fine Italian cuisine. We settled on a little cafe and split gnocchi and pizza and then wandered around the city some more. We came back to the station to just put our backpacks down and sit because we were tired of looking like homeless Goldwyn on the streets. We saw that our train was 30 min delayed. So we ventured out again and got dessert, gelato for me and Jess and both Britt and I got canolis (sp?). So delicious. We spent some more time sitting on our backpacks on the street and then made our way back to the station again where it said that it was now 2 hours delayed. Ugh... So we sat down in a corner of the station and strictly out of bored and tiredness and soreness of our bodies started doing some interpretive dance moves and then random yoga poses together right outside of the door leading to the platforms. Needless to say we got some strange looks and even applause from passerbys. Good times for all. Another 50 minutes were added to the delay and we believed we would never make it to Rome. But alas the train did come, delay was sadly due to a boy committing suicide on the tracks. We arrived in Rome and tried to decipher the somewhat confusing directions to our hostel, The Yellow. We got there and got some serious attitude from our receptionist. But we were over it so we checked in, got some delicious food and sparkling wine across the street at a cute restaurant. We split three plates. So so good. Then we made our way back to our room, primped and went down to the hostel bar to enjoy our complimentary drink, which we discovered does not cover a flute of Vueve Cliquot (sad day) but we had cute pink martinis/cosmos. We had difficulty meeting people and we were tired so we went to sleep somewhat early that night.

Roma (Day 2) - We woke up a little early do we could get a jumpstart on our jam packed day. Jess had to go to the train station to sort out the rest of her train tickets, so we split up at the station and Britt and I headed to the Vatican Museum. Longest line of our lives. People and straight hustlin' you the whole time to. "Skip the line! Pay 45£ for this tour" blah blah... And then we realized thaty shorts were too short to get in so we had Jess stop at te hostel to pick up my jeans. This all turned out to be a huge pain and we waited for her at the front of the line for a while but then she was going to be another 20 mins so we ended up tying some random clothing around us to get past the guards. The museum was absolutely gorgeous and MASSIVE. We finally made it to the Sistine Chapel, which was incredible. Then we met up with Jess and decided that we were super hungry so we went on a quest to find food. This was minorly disasterous, as I was trying desperately to find thi certain McDonalds where I could get wifi to check foursquare for a good place to eat. 30 minutes later we were distraught when it did not in fct have wifi. So we picked a place and just ate there. It was cute and te owners were even cuter. Next was the Coliseum, where we proceeded to take a cajillion funny photos, then we walked all the way through the ruins, the Forum, etc. We met this man on a bike who walked us all the way to the Pantheon. Very talkative but we were skepital. We made friends with a random hotel recepionist who gave us a restaurant suggestion and let us drink on the roof terrace, super classy. We got gelato and looked at the Trevi fountain. We then started heading back and ran into two boys who spoke English who we found out were from the states and decided to join them on their quest to find some Ice bar. It was quite the journey and we picked up a few more people on the way, and had the best time ever. Rome treated us well.

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