When in Rome...
This entry is going to cover Rome (much to Geordie and Bridget's dismay) and hopefully I'll get one of Romania in soon...there should be some free time in the next few days. This was supposed to be posted 12 hours ago, but I got pulled away to enjoy some of Romania's attractions. But I will point out what a wonderful roommate and all around person Geordie is!
Well after a night of eating pizza, watching Grey's Anatomy & eating yummy chocolate, i just couldn't keep my eyes open as I had hoped in order to post an entry. So here I am as you sleep, writing so you'll wake up to what you've been waiting for.
So let's talk about Rome a bit. I loved it there. Ruins everywhere! You go to the forum (which I ended up in 3 times) and there are just pieces of ruin everywhere. At first I saw people sitting on parts of columns and was appalled that they would do that...but by the end I was sitting on the fallen walls like the rest of 'em.
We arrived in Rome Friday morning and caught a bus to the train station. Then after much searching we found a tourist info booth. We got on a bus to get to our hotel/hostel...well that was a bit of a disaster. The buses are a bit difficult to use if you don't know what your stop looks like. And the bus maps we were told we could find at the train station were nowhere to be found. We did find a "No bus maps" sign at the info booth...lovely. So after getting off the bus and wandering for a long time...we asked someone who spoke english for a bit of help...he pointed us in the right direction. This was after a sweet little old lady just kept on trying to tell us directions in Italian...i had no clue what she was saying...but she kept on saying it, bless her.
Yikes this is going to take forever at this rate. So lets summarize a bit. So the first day we finally get to the hostel. We settle in a bit and then it starts to rain! So this we used as an excuse to rest a bit. We were directed to a friendly local restaurant and when were done eating, the rain had stopped!
So without any plan we decided to head to the Colosseum, just to see something. Well we ending up wandering into the Forum, and like I said just amazing ruins. I whipped out the Rick Steve's book, and he told us a bit about what we were looking at. We got some pretty cool pictures because the sun was setting. We stayed until they kicked us out. This is where Bridget discovered her love of bricks.
Satur
day morning we ventured onto the Metro (the subway system) and that was much easier to follow than the buses. We went to the Vatican to get to our tour at 9am. We found our "Angel" tour guides and got to wait 40 minutes in a line that was supposed to be a no-wait line (which sometimes at most is 20 minutes on busy Saturdays) It was the longest the tour guide, Lena, had ever seen it. Now imagine the line for people without a pre-booked tour...we heard that it was over 2.5 hours wait. So the tour was a bit rushed, but the Vatican museums are amazing. Then we got to see the Sistine Chapel (where unfortunately no pictures are allowed) but it was pretty amazing. Our tour guide gave us a lot of history of the process that Michelangelo went through in painting it. Turns out he didn't want to do it...wasn't much of a painter compared to his sculpting...so he did a lot of practicing on the less important parts.
(Sorry I was supposed to have this posted earlier in the day, but i got rushed off unexpectedly)So anyhow after we saw the Sistine Chapel we then went to St. Peter's Basilica which was amazing. We spent some time looking at all the cool stuff. They wanted it to be made of only things that would last, so it's only gold, bronze, marble (and maybe a few other things) So there are these paintings on the walls and you go hey...they're paint! Well nope, you get closer and you see that it's all colored tiles...they're pretty cool.
So that night we tried to get to the Pantheon but stupid bus 81 didn't show up! We had quite a bit a trouble with the buses. So we made it to the Trevi Fountain in the evening which was very cool and crowded. Tradition says that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain you will return to Rome. So I made sure that I made my donation. The money in the fountain is supposedly used to feed the needy in Rome.
Sunday we decided to go on another Angel Tours tour of the Colosseum and Forum. Turns out that it looks it does because it was being "recycled" for use to build other things in Rome. Like so many other things in Rome, once proclaimed holy ground buildings were saved. So it was named holy ground in remembrance of the Christian martyrs who had died there. (but they probably didn't die there but other places) So other buildings that were once temples to Roman gods were often then turned into churches, thus preserving them for us to enjoy today.
We then went to San Clemente Church which was pretty fascinating. There is the main church which has a fresco which is said to be one of the first to start off the Renaissance. Then below is an old Christian Worship space used when the Christians were being prosecuted. Then one level lower is a temple to Mithral a god worshipped mostly by soldiers. It was cool seeing the 3 levels.
We then finally made it to the Pantheon and the Circus Maximus where Ben Hur and other charioteers raced.Unfortunately Sunday night I wasn't feeling good, so I decided to stay home on Monday while Bridget braved the unknown and went to Pompeii. I went to Palatine Hill where the Rulers of Rome lived, which you could see why, they had an awesome view. I then went to one of the Santa Maria churches (the one from Roman Holiday) and put my hand in the Mouth of Truth like they did in the movie. I'm not sure of the lore behind that, so I'll have to look into that.
Then I can't say where i was exactly...just wandered, got a feel for the streets of Rome. Got a little disoriented...walked into to random churches which were amazing...never made it to the Pantheon area where I wanted to look at the churches. Oh well...next time.
So Tuesday we decided to check out this one building we saw a few minutes from our hostel before we left. It turned out to be a famous church, but we didn't have time to check it all out. Another thing to put on my to do the next time i got to Rome list.
Getting to the airport was pretty easy....and that's where I leave you. Hopefully I'll get to put in a bit about Romania. The little bit I can tell you is that things don't seem to be the "norm" here. Fancy new pizza places, paved sidewalks, numbered parking spaces, not very many babies in the hospital, cars stopping for pedestrians, and tame taxi rides...I'll fill you in more soon.
~Tinerbell