Rome

Sorry for the several days delay. I had to study for a Greek test for approximately 100 hours and I'm still pretty sure I failed. Along with the rest of the class. We can't all fail though can we?

Anyways. Rome. Rome was great. There is really no other word for it. It was absolutely amazing.

I left on Monday afternoon and got into Rome at about sunset. I took a bus from the airport to the center of town, and walked to where we stayed. I ran into Papa who was outside to meet me. It was sooo nice to see him again. I really miss everyone. After I dropped all of my stuff off and I showed him my pictures of the Peloponnese and he showed me some pictures of home and many more from his earlier trip to Florence. We went to dinner at a restaurant that was a block or so from where we were and I got a delicious calzone with ham, mozzerella, and ricotta. It was sooo good. We went back to the room, and I fell asleep (again you will find that this is a theme for this trip as well.)

The first real day in Rome we woke up ate cold pizza for breakfast, and went to the Colosseum. The line to get into the Colosseum was very long, but once we got in, it was amazing. It is hard to imagine Gladiator battles in there, along with like mock sea battles, and fighting lions, and so much else. Now it easy to see how many people could have been in the audience. Why you would want to be in the audience of a Gladiator battle is beyond me, but times have changed. After the Colosseum we went to the neighboring Roman Forum, where Romans used to meet to talk and gossip and make huge decisions. Whatever. We saw the grave of Julius Ceaser, and learned that people still put flowers on his grave. Thank you Rick Steves. After seeing the extensive forum we wandered over Palatine hill, which had palaces and a huge stadium. After wandering around here for a while we realized that it was already 4, we hadn't had lunch, we still wanted to visit the Pantheon and the Trevi fountain, and we were going to meet my roommates for dinner at 7. So we left and wandered over to the Pantheon and grabbed a sandwich on the way. The Pantheon is also very cool. It is amazing that it is like 200o years old and still in the amazing shape that it is in. The Trevi fountain is also very cool, but there were lots of people trying to throw in coins and taking pictures. We headed back to drop off some things and grab some other things, and found my roommates hostel, Clara and her parents were there already. We went to this very good little family restaurant, and it was really nice to see everyone and I think Papa appreciated meeting them. We headed back to our room and fell asleep.

The next day, we got to see the Pope!!! We got to the Vatican to like 10:15 for a 10:30 general assembly that the Pope was going to show his face at. Yeah. He was late. Also, he drove by in his Popemobile like 15 feet away from me. No big deal. After that, we found out that St. Peter's doesn't open until like 1 on days that the Pope was going to be there. So we went to this awesome museum by the Forum instead. It was a very cool museum. It had so much stuff. It was great. After that we went back to St. Peter, and looked at the seemingly never ending line and got in it. It circled almost all the way around the square, but it actually didn't take that long. And before we knew it we were in the church. It was pretty cool. There were lots of tourists there. After we went on our Rick Steves audio tour, we went to the top of the dome. That was fun. And once we got there we had an amazing view of the city. We then went to dinner, and then got deserts with my roommates Brynn and Pat. Then I fell asleep.

Thursday we went to Naples to see Pompeii and Herculaneum. We left at 8 in the morning to catch a 8:27 train to Naples. The trip was long. Once we finally got to Naples (which is a very ugly city) we took a (gross old smelly) train to Pompeii. Pompeii is huge. You could spend all day there and still not even be half way through the site. Papa and I, however, and bought a joint ticket with Herculaneum, so we were forced to leave Pompeii and get back on the (gross smelly old) train. Once we got to Herculaneum, it was suddenly worth it. It is comparable to Pompeii, in that it is extremely well preserved, but Herculaneum is smaller, less touristy, and has even more preserved than Pompeii. You could see the upper stories here, whereas in Pompeii, most of the upper stories had been destroyed in the Volcano. It was cool to see all the wall-paintings and mosaics that were still at these places. After a while there, it was getting late, so we got some gelato and got on the (gross old smelly) train, back to the train station, back onto another train like 3 and a half hours later (it was an even longer trip back) we got back. We ate some pizza and fell asleep (told you it would become a theme).

The next day we had another early day. We woke up and went to the Borgeses galleries, where we spent a good couple hours. It was a cool museum. They didn't let people take pictures. By the time we left, it was lunch time, so we went to the Spanish steps and ate a sandwich. After that we made our way back to where we were staying. We then got some gelato. I sat in gum. One of my three pairs of pants that I brought to Greece were basically out of commission. Great. At 7 we had reservations at the Vatican museum, so we waved to everyone who was waiting in line, and went inside. The Vatican museum is a very cool museum. I know they got everything from basically killing their original owners, just plain stealing, or buying them on the black market with money that should have been spent on poor people, but the Vatican museum was a very cool museum. They did a very good job with it. We ate dinner, and we went back and I fell asleep.

The last day we began with a trip to Ostica Antiqua, which was the port of ancient Rome. It was comparable to Pompeii and Herculaneum, but in some ways it was even better preserved or reconstructed. You could walk up several flights of stairs in an apartment building, but it was not very touristy. It was very cool. I could have spent all day there, but we wanted to get to a museum that was near where we were staying. So left not completely finished with the site, but then we went to that museum. I like museums. It was a decent museum. Then we went another place, but I don't really remember because I was so exhausted from the earlier part of the trip.

The next morning we woke up at like 5 to catch our planes. I had a terrible headache and was super cranky. I caught my plane and made it back to good old Athens. It was a very good week.