Rome Wasn't Built In A Day, But It Was Walked In A Day (Saturday April 24)

The rain we had gone to bed to was still there when we woke up. Despite being in a new and exciting city, the desire to get out of bed and out into the rain was limited. Instead, we slept in a little bit. We got up and went downstairs to check out so that we could check back in to our original room. The mystery of the non-existent reservation was solved. Our bad. We were supposed to go to the hostel's other location: the Alessandro Palace Downtown, not the Alessandro Palace. Oops. After a little confusion and assuring the man behind the counter that we were not going to pay for the difference since the woman the night before had looked at the confirmation email we had given her and not noticed the mistake then. The man's co-worker, a lovely italian woman spoke to him in Italian and I'm pretty sure told him to just let us be. We had some breakfast, basically a roll & orange juice and headed out in the rain. The rain jacket helped but I was mad I had not brought my umbrella. Not that my umbrella was in much condition after the beating it suffered in the Parisian winds. But just as I spoke my desire for an umbrella, a man literally popped up out of nowhere selling them. Ask and you shall receive. I was a little cautious to buy an umbrella from this random man so we kept walking. More umbrella dealers. We finally stopped at a stand (looked more legit) and I got a new umbrella. I of course was willing to pay how much he asked for it, but Claire gave me the look of death and proceeded to barter for it. Right on.

Even in the rain, I loved Italy already. Every nook and cranny was adorable. Little alleyways that looked like a movie set. Cafes with checkered table cloths. Gelato stands everywhere. Claire and I headed in the direction of the Colosseum. You got to hit the big things first. We weaved through the streets until we saw it at the end of the road. (Boyz II Men reference for Stacy). We walked around the Colosse, taking in its immensity and antiquity.

We knew it wouldn't be our last time next to the Colosseum so we headed down the Fori Imperial, stopping to take in all the ruins from the Imperial Forum. We walked to the end of the Imperial Road to the Monument to Victor Emanuel, the first king of united Italy. A large and imposing building on the top of a hill. Quite a memorial.

We crossed the road (no crosswalks=dodging the fierce Italian drivers who love to honk at you) and headed in the direction of the Pantheon. On our way, stumbling upon Scholars Irish Pub and deciding that our time in Ireland has allowed us Irish intuition to find pubs wherever we go. We stopped in the Minerva church and found a group of tourists and some kind of ceremony going on. The ceremony: someone's wedding.

Having shared in someone's special day, we continued to the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a temple for the ancient gods of Rome that was later used as a place of Christian worship. It also houses the tomb of esteemed artist Rafael. (Italy was pretty much one Ninja Turtle reference after another-- we flew into Leonardo (Da Vinci) Airport, we saw the works of Michaelangelo, and we walked by the former house of Donatello). It was supposed to be a silent place of worship, but the tourists had taken over and it was rather loud. A notable group of tourists had on clear rain ponchos and from their bike helmets were taking Rome by bike.

We toured around the Piazza Navona (the biggest square in Rome) and then made our way back to the hostel to meet up with Stacy who had just flown in.

We passed the Trevi Founation on our way and found Stacy at the train station.

We checked in at the desk and Stacy dropped off her stuff in the luggage room and we headed back out in search of lunch. We found a Pizzeria and sat down. We order pizzas and munched on bread & olive oil from the large jug on our table. The waiter kept telling me I looked sleepy--blame it on the rain. I ordered the four cheese pizza, which was cheesey but lacking crust. Italian pizza is about as thin as you can get.

Loaded with pizza, we headed for the Colosseum to take a tour. I took a little bit of a detour though a park and near an old aqueduct until we found the Colosseum. We decided to have a guided tour because otherwise its just looking at a bunch of old columns and stuff. Plus the girl advertising the tour was super friendly, despite the fact that she was wearing a necklace that said "Naughty". Strange, a little. We got our little gold sticker that denoted the tour group and enjoyed the sun which had finally come out. All the umbrella dealers, which were many, who continued to ask if we wanted umbrellas even though we both had them had been replaced with sunglass dealers. Our tour guide Max was an Italian man rocking a shiny puffy ski coat. Nice choice sir. He described/explained the history of the Colosseum like you would to a group of 4th graders: with a picture book. It was kind of like information overload so here's a brief sampling of the knowledge I acquired about the Colosseum.

1. It was constructed in 80 A.D.

2. While the Colosseum has stood the test of time, the Circus Maximus was the more popular spot in its time and it held a large crowd.

3. The Colosseum was built using a crane (because "the Italians are lazy and don't like to work, and still don't") that lifted the rock/stone on top of one another. The slabs of rock were then secured together using copper rods and liquid lead. The holes in the Colosseum is where people used to cut out the stone so they could cut out the metal, melt it down, and make weapons.

4. Gladiators fought in the Colosseum against other Gladiators and against wild jungle animals who had been caged up in the floors and starved for weeks to make the angry and bloodthirsty.

5. Any rank of people could attend events in the Colosseum but if you sat near the floor you had to wear white, as to not distract the gladiators.

6. Anything you want to learn about Gladiators can be referenced back to the movie Gladiator.

Before we went inside, we got to take a picture with a gladiator. What an occupation. Imagine on parental occupation day at school... what does your dad do? "My dad is a Gladiator at the Colosseum". What only made them better was that one of them hit on Stacy, telling her that he "liked her hair" and "i like you very well" while proceeding to pinch her on her cheek. (Facial, not butt). Max later told us that gladiators (past and present) do not make good boyfriends.

After learning all we could from Max, the group dispersed and we wandered around the Colosseum, soaking it all in. The sun was hot and we decided gelato was in order. We headed back towards the Imperial Forum and found a gelato shop.

We continued walking, trying not to get gelato all over us, some succeed, some failed. We passed a bunch of street vendors selling watercolors and one man carving flowers out of vegetables making a large pile of Euros.We made our way towards the Trevi Fountain. Italians seem to be as superstitious as the Irish, and ofcourse it is customary to toss a coin in the fountain backwards and make a wish. The Italians however are a bit more conceded and the wish is standardly "a speedy return to Rome".

Perhaps my favorite part of the Trevi Fountain was the man with a stick with a magnet on it, picking up the coins from the bottom of the Trevi that people had tossed in. Classy classy man. All the other tourists looked at him with the same look of disbelief. And there were plenty of tourists. There were so many people crowded around this fountain it was unbelievable.

We headed to the Spanish Steps, which as the name indicated was a little bit of a climb. The view was beautiful and the whole atmosphere was very romantic. Not surprisingly there were man walking around with roses. One of the men approached us, gave us each a rose because we were "bellas" and we thanked him, and quickly handed the roses back to him in unison when he asked for "a little money". We wanted to enjoy the atmosphere and the view but as soon as we sat down on the steps, some guys wanted us to take a picture with them. Random, weird, whatever. Totally normal in Europe sometimes. All the flowers were blooming and the dusk light was perfect, but it was hard to enjoy the atmosphere with all the creepers.

We walked towards our hostel in the direction of the Palazzo Barbeni so Claire could get yet another picture of a fountain (the new statue). Our only problem encountered was when Stacy dropped her umbrella in the middle of the street and we watched it get run over by an SUV. Classic. We made it back to the hostel and moved into our 8 bed room. We met a fellow roommate Nick who turned out to be from Wheaton and have a distant acquaintance in common with Stacy. He turned out to be playing volleyball in Austria, and invited us to join him on the pub crawl that evening but we were all exhausted from walking the whole city. We enjoyed some of the free pizza from the hostel and then headed to get some real dinner. We found a little local restaurant, of which I'm pretty sure the waitress,host, and cook were all the same woman. But my bruschetta was delish and inexpensive. We headed back to the hostel in hopes for a good nights sleep.