When in Rome..

Bonjurno!

I'm going to start out by saying happy belated Easter! As many of you know, I just got back from my 10 day trip to Italy. It was amazing. But since I went to so many different places over a long period of time, I am going to split up my blog posts by city. My goal: pretty much rotate between pasta, pizza and gelato. Overall: achieved. But I will be starting with the wonderful city of Roma. I would just like to start by saying I had high expectations for Rome, and many of my expectations came from seeing Rome in the Lizzie McGuire movie (not lying- this is the most I had seen of "Rome" before actually going). Let me just say that movies are very untrue.

Friday, March 30th, Megan, her friend Mike from SLU who went with us and I walked around Madrid before heading out on our flight late at night. We pretty much just walked around Sol. Our flight was late and of course, with the lovely Ryanair, we were delayed by an hour and a half. When we finally arrive in Rome at midnight, we then had to navigate to and check into our hostel. Our hostel was called "The Yellow", aka the "sexiest hostel in Rome." Why did we pick this you ask? I honestly don't remember. My guess is that it had the best location and was the cheapest. I expected it to be pretty nasty, but it wasn't too bad. It wasn't the worst hostel we stayed in, but it wasn't the best either. After a long flight, we were happy to fall into bed before our long trip.

Megan alta (the other Megan who I room with- Megan my roommate with be Megan pequena from now on in this to avoid confusion) and Stephanie flew into Pisa on Thursday and Saturday morning they met us at the hostel. After they were all settled in, we set out to take Rome by storm. First stop? The Spanish Steps. Now I would just like to say, I expected the Spanish Steps to be the huge elegant staircase with many, many stairs. Like too many stairs to count. But that is not it at all. They are just normal steps. Why are they famous? If someone could explain that to me, that would be great. So we walked up the steps, looked out, then walked back down. Overall, major disappointment. These were probably my least favorite part of Rome.

The not so special Spanish Steps

Fountain

View from steps

After that we attempted to make our way to the Trevi fountain. But us being in Rome, we got distracted along the way and didn't make it there that day. We looked at a lot of the buildings until we ran into what we thought may have been the pantheon (it was the National Museum which looks absolutely nothing like the pantheon- again perception problems). After walking around the outside of the museum, we meandered over to a church that was made in they 113 or something close to that. It was really cool to see a building that old. Then we walked around a nearby plaza and soon ended up looking at some Roman ruins. It was around this time we realized we were hungry and it was time for our first Italian meal.

I just love this picture

Streets

Random building

Pretty garden

Again

Ready adventurers (Meg, Steph, Meg)

National Museum

Old church

again

plaza

Zues

fountain

Ruins

More ruins

We found a little restaurant nearby and ordered our food. I chose fettucine alfredo as my first pasta dish. It was different than what I was used to, but then again, my experience doesn't reach far outside the realm of olive garden. It was just creamier/milkier than I was used to, but still pretty good. After lunch, we realized we were super close to the Colosseum, so we decided to go there instead of to the Trevi fountain. On the way to the Colosseum, we ran into a gelato shop. Of course, being in Italy, we had to get some. I got chocolate, mint chocolate chip and stracciatella. It was very yummy.

Alfredo

A few more ruins

Gelato-so yummy!

Our last stop for the day we went to the Colosseum. Again, I'm not exactly sure what I expected but it wasn't the what the Colosseum actually was. Don't get me wrong, unlike the Spanish steps, I thought the Colosseum was really cool and unique. But it wasn't designed exactly how I expected it to look on the inside. I really enjoyed walking around the inside though, we spent over an hour there. After that, we headed over and walked around the nearby ruins for a bit. When they announced that it was closing, we were more than happy to head back to our hostel to find some food since we had been walking almost none stop for over 7 hours.

Colosseum

Inside

I like the sun 

from the top

Meg, Steph, Meg, Me, Mike

Me

Roomies <3

Walking through the ruins

Some more

We stopped by a pizzeria near our hostel, but it wasn't anything special. I got a margherita pizza, but it was pretty bland. I was so hungry that I didn't really care and basically inhaled it. We went back and chilled in the bar/lounge area of the hostel for a little bit, but everyone was exhausted so we went to bed really early.

The next day was Palm Sunday, so we headed out bright and early to go to a mass at a church near the Vatican called St. Anne's. Obviously we had absolutely no idea what was going on because it was all in Italian. It was a lot different though than masses I'm used to, there was no homily, just a very long reading split between 3 priests. After mass, we walked to the short distance to Vatican City to see the Pope. Luckily, shortly after we arrived, he came out. It was definitely an awesome experience to be able to see him, especially on Palm Sunday where he actually came out into the plaza and gave a mass. The mass itself was four hours, so we only stayed for about an hour. Even though we didn't stay the whole time, it was still an unforgettable experience that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. It is unreal.

St. Peter's Square

Palm procession 

the Pope!!

My palm with others

Pope again

Once more

St. Peter's basilica

this guy...

After that, we headed back to the hostel, made ourselves a yummy lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and took a little rest before heading out again. This time we did make it to the Trevi Fountain. I was a little disappointed, but only because I expected a huge plaza to be surrounding it (Lizzie McGuire movie) when in reality it is just a few stairs. But the fountain itself was beautiful. I really enjoyed tossing the coins in and making wishes. We took quite a few pictures and goofed around a bit before finding some gelato. After we got some gelato, we walked over to the pantheon.

Trevi Fountain

Stephanie making a wish

Megan alta making a wish

Me making a wish!

Kiwi and strawberry gelato- my favorite combo overall

I think I had the pantheon confused with the parthenon because I did not expect it to be a church. I don't really know what I thought it would be. It was still cool to see and I'm sure there is a lot of history there that I am just unaware of (I've really never been a fan of history- although I do enjoy learning new things on tours about the monuments we look at/have liked it a bit more in college). We just walked around inside for a bit before heading out to the next adventure.

Pantheon

Inside

Center

Next on our list of things to see: churches. We went to see a Jesuit church and then another famous church after that (I forgot the names of them- I have probably seen over 50 churches since coming to Europe). They were both really interesting and they actually stuck out in my mind (again hard to do with so many churches). The Jesuit one had a black dome, which is unusual because they are usually intricately painted with bright colors and images of heaven/sky/angels/etc. The other one had the most unique ceiling I have ever seen. It was a mix of painting and sculpture coming out of the ceiling, but the cool thing is that you can't tell where the painting ends and the sculpting begins. They were both interesting churches and I'm glad we stopped to see them. After all of this, we were hungry, so we stopped for some dinner.

Jesuit church

Inside

ceiling

dome

altar

black dome

Other church

pretty

cool ceiling

altar

dome

spaghetti amatricana (or something)

After dinner, we went back to the Trevi Fountain because we wanted to see it at night time. Of course, we got there before the sun had set so we just sat around and people watched until it turned dark. Let me tell you, there are some interesting people. I was very entertained until it became night time. We then headed back to the hostel and attempted to be social in the bar/lounge area but we were all really tired. Megan's friend Mike and I walked around the area a little bit talking before going to sleep, but the others hit the hay really early.

Night time

concentration

The next day we went to the Vatican Museum, but not before getting a nice brunch of pancakes! I have never been a big breakfast person, but since being here I have missed breakfast food a lot. Before heading over to the museum, we had a little time so we explored a huge park. We just walked around a chilled. It was a very peaceful and relaxing morning. We also got to see where they used to hold chariot races (I think) which was pretty cool. I liked to imagine watching one of those. Sadly, our time at the park was not as long as we would have liked because we had to head over to Vatican city for the museum!

Park

"stands" for races

Chariot stadium

Steph "owling"

Anyway, when we got to the museum, I saw it was absolutely gigantic. I am convinced you could spend a week in there and not really see/enjoy everything. Some of the exhibits were closed, so that made it easier for us to choose what we wanted to see. I really liked the Egyptian part, I have no idea why, but I did. I also enjoyed walking through the hallway of statues. Unfortunately, we lost Mike in the middle of our tour. We looked everywhere, but couldn't find him. Once it had been more than the standard time, we started to get worried so we headed straight to the sistine chapel, hoping to find him there. We didn't find him there, so the view of it was kind of soured by worrying about where he was. I also didn't really know what to expect for the sistine chapel. At first I was like okay, it's cool but not all that interesting. But then I thought about how it was painted, and it gave it a lot more significance. After a quick view through the chapel, we headed out, where luckily we found Mike waiting for us at the exit. (there are too many pictures so I will just show you a few- also no pics of the sistine chapel because they weren't allowed).

statue hall

what a lively bunch

mummy!

egypt

lots of crosses

Next, was St. Peter's basilica. It was huge and beautiful. I really liked it, it was one of my favorite churches, it was so breathtaking. It's really hard to describe, but it was a wonderful experience just to wal through something that had such beautiful structure and design. In all fairness though, I think it is a little unfair to compare it to the other churches we have visited. We walked all around in there and just took it all in. But by the time we were they, I think we were all pretty tired and our feet were sore, so we didn't stay for a really long time. After the museum, it was time for some dinner.

St. Peter's basilica

a dome

main altar

Again

Megan alta and Me

another dome

Pope statue

hallway

4 cheese pasta 

After dinner, we headed over to the plaza of four fountains, and it was really cool. Along the way, we stopped and got canolis because it was kind of cold for gelato. I got a chocolate one and it was so yummy and delicious. Stephanie did a project on the area and that's why we knew about it. . But we went at night and it was really pretty all lit up. Also it was less commercialized and seemed more like a "classy" area of Rome. I don't really know how else to describe it. Sadly, it started to rain a bit, so we headed back to our hostel to get some sleep before heading to Florence the next day.

chocolate canoli!

plaza

again

one

two

three (called 4 but only 3)

And that was my Rome trip. I am glad we went to Rome first for a few reasons. One is that the food there, although it was good, was my least favorite here. It improved as we went to each place. Also is that since Rome is such a touristy place, we were always on the move, and I don't think we would have had the energy to do everything we did at the end of our trip. So overall, with a few minor bumps in the road, Rome was a success. Next stop, Florence.

Until then,
Ashley