Sorry sorry sorry this post is so late! It was a busy week at school ☺

Whew! Whirlwind weekend in Roma! It hardly even feels like I was there.

Let’s start from the beginning. We left from Santander airport early Friday afternoon and landed in Rome a couple of hours later. We needed to wait for two more people at the bus station and we were all hungry, so we chose a restaurant right across from the station. I experienced my first Italian pizza. SO good. Now if we could only switch Spanish food for Italian… ☺ Afterward we checked into our hostel, the Yellow. It was pretty nice, and super great because we had air conditioning. But I promise you that I’m not so spoiled that I can’t live without air, but let me just inform you of the temp for the weekend… 95 degrees. The. Whole. Weekend. Oh hey, no big deal. I LOVE sweat. Especially for pictures! ;) But I’ve heard that all of you in the U.S. are having the same sort of weather… but YOU’VE been hiding in the cool air!

Anyway…we left the Yellow for some city exploration, heading in the direction of the Colosseum. We wanted to hit that up first so that we’d have more time for everything else the next day. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was already closed. So we used the time as a photo opportunity for pics outside of the Colosseum, and then we continued on our way. We walked past a good portion of the Roman Forum. I had to mentally pinch myself the entire weekend to remind myself how lucky I was to be surrounded by pieces of history that date back to the beginning of known time. And I just loved to let myself imagine what life was like back then, with people living within and around the structures when they were first built. We walked around the city a bit more, and then decided to stop for dinner at a cozy little Italian restaurant. We sat outside where icicle lights were hung around the porch. We all tried different things, and Ashley and I shared some pasta that was AMAZING! It had mushrooms and a cream sauce more like alfredo… yummmm. And so continues my love affair with Italian food… After a long and leisurely meal, we ended up at the Trevi Fountain a little after midnight. Well, I mean… we stopped for gelato first, of course. ;) Such a great combination… pineapple gelato + Trevi= amore. The fountain was absolutely gorgeous lit up… every bit as great as I thought it would be.

The next morning I woke up at good old 6 am to get ready for the day. We were to meet up with the rest of the group and then head to the Vatican before it opened so that we could get in quickly since it’s only open in the morning on Saturday. Welp, skip that… we got there a little after it opened and waited a good two hours. It wasn’t all bad though… lines are an EXCELLENT way to people watch. I just prefer to do my people watching when I’m not in that kind of heat. Oh well… when we got into the Vatican, we checked out all of the museum right away. HOLY FLIP. I never knew a place could hold so much old, but unbelievably beautiful artwork. I was so much in awe the entire time. I think I could spend a whole other week inside there and still feel like I didn’t see everything. We ended up at the Sistine Chapel, which is so different than I ever thought it would be. But not in a bad way… I just felt more like I was in a huge room with floor to ceiling paintings than a real chapel. But I cannot even put into words how powerful Michelangelo’s paintings are. And I can’t imagine how he painted all of that in such a short time. I mean, it would probably take me 4 years just to paint a leg. MAJOR props to Michelangelo. By the time we got out, we were all separated into small groups. Katie, Ashley, Kathrine and I were hungry, but we wanted to see St. Peter’s Basilica before we left to eat. Unlucky for us, it was another two hours waiting outside to get into the Basilica, so we chose as a group not to stay. I have to say that it’s the one thing that I’m really disappointed that I didn’t get to see, but I realize that there is really only so much you can do in two days. On our way to lunch, we did the touristy thing and shopped for souvenirs, and then took the metro back to our side of town to find a pizza place I had heard of for lunch. When we got there, we saw that it was closed until dinner. Shoot. However, there was another place that looked really good just up the street. At this time, we were ready to settle for anything anyway because we were so tired and hot from the heat.

But let’s just say that we chose REALLY well. The pizza I had changed my life. Really… it was FANTASTIC. There’s really no need to say more. After leaving heaven, we headed for the Colosseum. We decided to take the guided tour for 4 euro more so we could learn as much as possible about the Colosseum. We wore little walkie talkies so that we could hear our tour guide. Fun little toy, I must say. Obviously, it goes without saying that the Colosseum is amazing. We learned all sorts of cool things, and I’ll include a few for the benefit of my Daddio. First…I guess I could have assumed this, but I never did… the gladiators were slaves that were required to participate in these fights. They fought other gladiators literally for their lives. They were practically doomed to die, because when they won a fight, they were destined to fight another and another until they died. Within the Colosseum, there was a winner’s exit and a loser’s exit. The dead body of the losing gladiator was carried through the loser’s exit, where there was a mortuary of sorts. There were two different types of events held in the Colosseum, hunts in the mornings in which hunters killed exotic animals from around the Meditteranean like tigers and hippos, and the fights between the gladiators in the afternoons. The fights between gladiators began way before that as some sort of funeral ritual, but they were brought to an end when Christianity reached Roma’s royalty and they realized that it was being abused. These events were free for everyone in Roma… the emperor at the time used these games as an opportunity to gain favor in the eyes of all the Romans. But of course there were all different levels of seats, which a person sat in depending on class. The senators all had very spacious seats with their names engraved on them. When senators changed, the name of the previous senator was ERASED from the cement block, and the new name was added. The original name of the Colosseum was the Flavian amphitheatre, named after the Flavian emperors that built it. It was given its current name from the huge bronze statue called Colossus Neronis that was located right next to the amphitheatre. Just a few basic facts ☺

As soon as our tour was done, it began to downpour, so we headed back to our hostel. After the rain ended, we headed out to watch the soccer game, Spain vs. Paraguay. Of course, Spain won ☺ I’m really starting to like this stuff! We watched the game at a nice restaurant and bar at one end of Termini Station. I shared a calzone with Katie that was SO good… not surprisingly. Afterward, we headed in the direction of a gelato place that the people at the desk of our hostel recommended to me. We had a bit of a trek through the Roman ghetto to get there, but it was very much worth it. I had two kinds- zuppa inglesa and chocolate, of course. The first one tasted a lot like egg nog with chocolate chips, but it worked for me. ☺ By the time we got home for the night, we were soooo tired from the long day that we relaxed for the rest of the night. We woke up at the same time the next morning to catch our bus back to the airport. After a beautiful airplane ride with a boxing team from Santander, we arrived back to our city.

Oh you know, just another great weekend in beautiful Europe ☺

Love you all and hope all is well!

Abrazos y besos,
ME