blog.blog.blog.: Rome! And the Colosseum. June 1-2

We left our hotel in Athens for the airport at 9 am. We took the metro straight to the airport, which was about a 45 minute ride. We said our goodbyes to Erica and Katie, who also left at the same time, and then waited at our gate for around two hours, because our flight didn't leave until 1.30, and there was barely a security line.

I took a dramamine, and so I have basically no memory of the flight, haha, except for waking up facing the strange guy next to me with my mouth wide open. I'm pretty sure him and his friends were laughing at the way I was sleeping.

When we got to Rome, we took the train to Termini station. We met this really nice Romanian woman who has been living outside of Florence for the past 12 years, and her daughter. She took our map of Rome and circled all of the places that we should visit, and then gave us her phone number when we got off the train, saying that we should call her if we had any questions or if we were going to Florence (which we might). It sounded like she would show us around the town!

Our hostel is a five minute walk down Via Carlo Cattaneo, and we found it after a few minutes of walking around and asking people for directions. Normally I get really flustered when I don't know exactly where I'm going, but since I've been here and in Greece, I've been trying to just go with the flow more. Everything works out in the end!

We got all checked in, and I asked if my friends Kendra, Kelly and Farrah had arrived yet. We've been planning on meeting up here in Italy for at least three months, and I've been super excited to see them! Turns out, they accidentally made reservations at the other Hostel Alessandro, which is about 15 minutes away on the other side of the train station. So Fran and I booked it over to the other hostel and met up with them! Both our hostels had a free pasta dinner, and so we decided to meet up after and get gelato. We invited some of the people in our hostel to come with us, but only one Canadian guy came with us.

We all went out for gelato, and then Brendan the Canadian saw some other girls he knew who were walking to the Trevi Fountain and asked us to go with them. It took forever to get there, mainly because we had no idea where we were going, but it was totally worth it. The crowd was large for 10 pm, but it was beautiful!!!

After we made it back we were so exhausted. And of course everyone else in our hostel room was already asleep, which makes getting ready for bed harder because you have to be quiet and do things in the dark.

This morning we woke up at 7.30 to meet up with the girls and walk to the Colosseum, which is probably a 20 minute walk from the hostel. It was amazing. Its really hard to describe it and how huge it really is, because you can't even get the scope of it in pictures.

I really wish they offered more Roman history classes at school, because everyone kept asking me questions since I'm the history buff and anthro major. But I have no idea about a lot of Roman history. I need to take more classes!!!

We bought a tour thingy when we got there, which cost 20 euro (normal ticket entrance without a tour is 12) but we didn't feel like the guy was telling us relevant information and we decided to leave the tour and walk around on our own. He kept talking about random people choking animals with their bare hands in the arena and odd (and I feel not true) facts. He also said that they never actually re-created sea battles in the Colosseum, which I've heard they really did.

After we left, we went across the street to an overpriced place to eat, which had decent food. Then we tried to go to the Forum and around Palantine Hill, but for some reason we couldn't actually find the entrance, so we gave up and are now having a siesta in the hostel.

I'm not sure that Rome is what I expected. In my head I kept repeating that part in Count of Monte Cristo, when Count Mondego's son is begging him to let him and his friends go to Rome for Carnivale, and when he finally agrees, the son runs out into the hall and yells "Rome!" And then they cut to the streets of Rome in the late 1700's during Carnivale. I think that's what I was expecting.