But I am in love with Rome. I sort of feel like I'm cheating on Madrid, but only a short 32 hours in Rome was NOT enough for me. I can commit to saying that I would love to go back to Rome in an instant, to visit it with my family, to visit it with friends, go retire to Rome. And I would probably. The food was excellent, everything was walkable, the tiny little hostel we stayed at was adorable and the staff was super friendly (The Ciak Hostel, no where near anything but the Colosseum).
I went to Rome with Tita, of course. The first thing we did when we arrived was drop off our bags (at 11 pm at night) to the Hostel where Veronica and Nate had already PTFOd, and pretty much ran to the restaurant down the street that the front desk clerk at the Hostel had suggested, but warned that it would be closing at midnight. Three blocks and two minutes later, we had arrived at Mama Mia Pizzeria (yes, that is what it was called) and we had sat down to the delight of our waiter, who actually turned out to be the sweetest old egyptian man ever. We quickly decided what we wanted, as we were starving and true to our words, hadn't eaten anything all day in preparation of this meal. We split a Neapolitan calzone (cheeeese), I ordered ravioli and Tita ordered spaghetti with ragu. We split a tiramisu and since the Egyptian man loved us so much, he gave us free lemon gelato and some chocolate. We happily walked back to our hostel and passed out with our food babies / comas. Everyone snored happily that night.
We then woke up bright and early (well, 9 am) to a lovely breakfast provided by the hostel (3 day old croissants and toast-it-yourself bread) and proceeded to begin the sight-seeing marathon.
We began at Vatican City, by taking the metro from our Hostel on the west side of the city all the way North East. Vatican was just as impressive as I thought it would be, even if Tita needed some arm twisting to get there.
We went in and visited the Vatican museum and got to see the Sistine Chapel, both were filled with some really interesting objects and painted super elaborately.
But since we only had one day to see everything we could, we had to keep moving. From The Holy See, we walked to Castel Sant' Angelo, which was built as a mausoleum for Roman Emperor Hadrian, but later used as a fortress, a castle, a prison and today a museum!
From there, we walked to the above, Piazza Navona. Famous for being the place of the ancient roman "games" and competitions, and then later open markets. It also has fountains by Bernini in the center. There were food and toy vendors all over the place and at the north end, were artists selling their paintings.
This would be the ceiling of the Pantheon. When it rains, it pours through the roof but drains into the floor and they rope off the area so no one gets wet. The hole is there because back then, they didn't know if the building would be able to support the roof so in order to make it lighter, they cut this big hole. The pantheon was originally built as a "temple to all the roman gods" but is now a Roman Catholic Church known as "Santa Maria Rotunda".
We made it to the Trevi fountain, and it was PACKED with people, all throwing coins and taking pictures. The Piazza it is in isn't big at all, in fact the Trevi Fountain seems to take it all up. We managed to squeeze to the front and take some pictures but it was, of course, beautiful!
We hiked up to the Spanish Steps, although we are still unclear as to why they are called the Spanish steps, other than the fact that the Spanish embassy to Rome is just down the street. Tons of people just chilling out here too, but you are NOT allowed to eat here ( I read that later on wikipedia ). The Church at the top is also really beautiful, but the sight from the top is even better. As there aren't any huge buildings or towers in Rome, you have to climb to the top of hills to get a view of the city.
In between the Spanish Steps and the Colosseum, we saw the Neptune Fountain, the Roman Republic and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, which was actually hosting a exposition on Teotihuacan, Mexico, and the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II.Now... for some reason my blog will not allow me to put any more pics up on this post, which is OK since by the time we go to the Colosseum, it was getting very dark (even though it was only 6 pm) and my camera doesn't really work well outdoors at night. This is where the most tragic thing happened to me...we found out that the Colosseum was closed at 3 pm. I'm sure we would have known, had we looked at our iPod World Travel Guide App before we began that morning.
3pm was when we were at the Spanish steps. I didn't feel too guilty, since we did in fact get to see the Colosseum, albeit from the outside. I think my feelings can be most easily described through an analogy to one of my favorite television shows. Do you remember in America's Next Top Model? When the girls go on Go-Sees and they make interviews around the city, but have to be back in time or else they are disqualified? And there is always one girl that is disqualified, even though she did an amazing job on her interviews? Yeah, I know how that girl feels. We sat outside, looking up at this massive building, knowing there were ancient ruins to be seen within, but due to the low lighting and no doubt the high chance of us falling and hurting ourselves or the ruins should we enter, we knew there was nothing more to be done. We had seen what we could.
Rome wasn't built in one day, and it would be an injustice to try and see it all in one.
We decided to go for a full Italian dinner and drown our sorrows in red wine, which was super cheap anddd tasty. Mmm Lasagna.
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