Day 54: Friday, March 11, 2011

Today, Kevin and I were in Rome.  However, HE is going to be a little guest blogger and tell you all about it :)  He said he is going to do it this weekend, so if its not up, don't blame me!!! I know he'll do a fantastic job!  He is doing all the writing, and I'll add the pictures when he's done! Take it away Kev...

So we decided that I should write the posts for Rome, so I'll try to live up to Jackie's great posts.  We had decided on Thursday night what our plan would be, and decided we would do Ancient Rome on Friday and the Vatican on Saturday as our two main goals.  Ancient Rome is in the southeast part of the city and the Vatican is in the northwest so we wanted to cover all of the secondary sights on the southern side when we did the ancient stuff, and then the the same for the northern side on Saturday.

Pigeons gathering outside of St. Mary's.
It seemed very picturesque.  

We left the hostel around 9:30 Friday morning and headed towards the city.  The dude working at the hostel told us it was about a 20 minute walk to the Colosseum, so we took that as a 45 minute walk.  Everyone in Rome must be hauling ass whenever they walk anywhere.  So we stopped at a little bakery right outside St. Mary's Church before going in so we could grab a couple cheap pastries for only about 60 cents a piece; best deal I'd seen since arriving.  Then we went in to St. Mary's.  It was a really beautiful church, outside and inside, and the only problem we encountered was not knowing what was important about the church aside from its visual attractiveness.  We only went there because there was a landmark on our map pointing to it, and all of the plaques inside were in Italian so we were kind of blindly walking around inside.  I guess it was nice to just appreciate it for what it was!

Kevin and I outside of St. Mary's  

Kevin doing a fantastic job navigating us all
around Rome!

We kept it moving, knowing we had a lot of ground to cover.  There was another really cool looking building on the way towards the Colosseum on the map, but when we got to where the map told us to go, there was nothing there.  There was a lot of construction going on in the area where it seemed to be so we figured they were just doing some work on it.  I guess the same company that makes Jackie's GPS made the map we were using.  We weren't too worried about it because we could see the top of the Colosseum in the distance so we both got pretty excited.  When we got there, the line was awful and it didn't look to be moving much.  We wasted about 15 minutes of some poor tour promoter's time discussing whether we would join his tour, only to end up saying no and jumping in with another tour that was cheaper. Sorry about it.  The Colosseum was awesome, and some of the views inside were just amazing.  It was so cool to think about all of the history inside the Colosseum, and that we were walking in the same steps as some of the most influential people in history, like Russell Crowe.

Colosseum from the outside 

We did a tour with some Italian lady that was actually really lame.  It was cool that we got to skip the lines but the tour sucked.  All she did was talk about how its been restored, and how it was built.  She barely touched on any of the cool stuff that we were interested in, like gladiators and lion fights.  But aside from that, it was really one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  It was crazy to think how it held 70,000 people, more than Virginia Tech's stadium, but the Romans built it 2000 years ago with their bare hands.

View from inside the Colosseum 

The Colosseum from the inside 

Kevin and I 

Kevin inside the Colosseum 

Me on the second level of the Colosseum 

Kevin and I <3

Outside the Colosseum,
on the way to Palentine Hill 

After the Colosseum we were pretty hungry but didn't want to miss the next section of the tour.  The next part was the Palantine Hill and the Roman Forum.  Palantine Hill was the original hill of Rome where the city was founded 2700 years ago.  There were buildings up there that were original structures that have somehow withstood the weathering of time.  Our tour guide for the Hill was much better.  She was a British woman and she was very energetic and knew a lot about the history of the city.  We did stops on the way up the hill at different spots where there was a good view of the city, and ended up at the very peak of the hill, and we could see the entire city.  It was the second most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life (the first being Jackie), and the only thing that kind of ruined it for me was the precarious position the tour guide put herself in.  At the top of the hill she decided to sit on top of a fence, without holding on to anything and half of her butt hanging over the edge.  A strong gust of wind would have sent her plummeting about 500 feet to the bottom of a rocky shaft.  Fortunately she was fine, but unfortunately, I am so afraid of heights that by just looking at her in that position, I thought I was going to pass out and had to look away.

Ruins from the top of Palentine Hill 

More ruins

Kevin and I on the top of the hill 

Me on the hike back down the hill  

Kevin on the way down the hill 

Me outside the Emmanuel Vittorio II monument

From there we walked around the Forum for a bit, then went and looked for some lunch.  It was four o'clock by that time and all we had eaten was a 60 cent doughnut that morning.  We headed towards the rest of the sights we were going to do, but our attention was caught by the monument to Emmanuel Vittorio II, the first King of Italy.  It was a huge white monument that we were both fascinated by.  Neither of us could get over how huge the thing was.  We tried to get a picture that really emphasized how big it was, but nothing could do it justice.  Just take our word for it, it was enormous.  Jackie was very scared.  She's very little and hasn't ever seen anything that big.  I had to tell her that it was just a building and everything would be okay.

Kevin and I on the stairs of the monument

Kevin at the top

On the top of the monument

We ended up just hanging out there for quite a bit, really soaking in the massiveness of the monument then decided we were really hungry and needed food.  We went into a restaurant that was absolutely awful.  The menu was so overpriced but we didn't have many options so we figured we would just bite the bullet.  Painful bullet.  Our total ended up being about 25 US dollars for two kid sized plates of pasta and some Pringles.  I ordered gnocchi and they brought out about 15 gnocchi, equal to 4 bites.  Jackie finished her spaghetti and was still hungry so I gave her about half of my gnocchi.  I'd much rather suffer and be hungry than see her hungry so it was worth it to know she was satisfied.

From there we went to the Pantheon, an ancient temple that is the only original ancient dome still standing in Rome.  It was a really cool looking building, but we couldn't get a good picture of the outside because it was kind of in the middle of an alley.  All the other monuments and buildings were very open and viewable but the Pantheon wasn't.  We went inside and it houses the tombs for some of the most famous Italians, like Raphael and Emmanuel Vittorio II.

Dome of the Pantheon 

Tomb of Emmanuel Vittorio II 

We figured that we had seen enough that day, knowing we had a full day tomorrow to see the rest of the big sights.  Plus, we had heard about a pub crawl designed for tourists that started at 9.  We wanted to have time to go back to the hostel, get dinner, and make it there by 9.  We headed back,* got ready quickly then went out for dinner.  There was an ad for a Hard Rock Cafe nearby, and Jackie is having American cuisine withdrawals so we decided to head there.  We got there and it looked amazing.  It smelled so good inside and had a very American feel to it.  But our hopes were dashed when we heard that there was a 45 minute wait, and we only had about an hour and a half until the pub crawl.  Jackie was very disappointed, and we ended up settling for some Italian restaurant.  Jax got chicken and potatoes and I got some crappy pasta.  Needless to say, they both sucked.  Another bad meal.

The drink we got at
The Drunken Ship 

We were tight on time so we headed over to the Spanish Steps to meet with the rest of the pub crawl.  Well, we were the only people there and the guy running it spotted us out pretty easily.  He gave us a map and told us which way to go. When we got to the bar it was so quiet inside that you could hear the one waiter inside walking around.  Bad start.  We still decided to check it out, and found out that it was going to cost us about 70 US dollars total for 30 minutes of free beer and two free shots.  Not worth it at all.  We ended up quitting and just heading back to the Drunken ship, the bar we went to the night before.  It ended up being a pretty good time.  They had a pretty sweet deal, a pitcher of pretty much any drink you wanted for 19.50E.  So we got two!  The only down part of the night was these two really annoying people that help contribute to the "asshole American" stereotype.  One was a drunk chick that thought she needed to scream everything she said, and went up to the table next to ours and screamed "AMERICA, HELL YEAH!"  It was obnoxious.  The other annoying American was some d-bag that was playing beer pong, and every time he took a shot he did some stupid little ritual with the ball, rolling it back and forth then flicking it up in the air.  He also took a shot where he tried to bounce the ball off the wall into the cup, and missed horribly.  At least Jack and I had fun laughing at how stupid some of the people were.  We called it a night around 1:30 or 2 and headed to the hostel so we could do some more damage the next day!

Coco Loco's at The Drunken Ship :)