The Eternal City

     Sorry this post is a little later than I thought, I had some complications I had to attend to first. More on that later, for now I have to say Roma was an amazing city! There was four of us that went, I was there from Friday to Sunday night. Friday we arrived late afternoon and met up with our friend who had arrived earlier in the day. We walked to our hostel which was actually really nice. It was more of a small apartment because we had a floor to ourself with a full bathroom down the hallway. Also we had breakfast delivered to our door each morning at 9am. Friday we just decided to stroll around our local area which was right around Termini Station and checked out all the shops. There were tons of little street vendors that were selling fake watches, purses and belt buckles. I was tempted to buy one of the fake watches but could never find the guy selling them again, slightly disappointed. But as it got nearer to dinner time we found a restaurant and had what else... PASTA! I had tortellini, which was absolutely delicious, my friends had spaghetti, and lasagna.

     After dinner we walked around to explore a bit more before going to sleep. Saturday we set aside for our tourist day. We woke up for breakfast and then everyone showered, got ready and we headed out for the Vatican! One bad thing about Rome, their metro system only has two lines. One goes north and south, the other east and west. This makes things slightly annoying to get around but we nevertheless made it over to the Vatican. Before we went in we became hungry again (breakfast was coffee and a croissant) so we found this little pizza parlor and ordered some food. Yes we were being typical tourists and trying to get anything authentic Italian =). The pizza's came out and it was HUGE and delicious! Also one of the guys I was traveling with decided to get a liter of beer, I don't think he knew exactly how large a liter is. After lunch we strolled along into the Vatican Museum and saw the Sistine Chapel, amazing place and very beautiful. The famous part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling that everyone thinks of is actually much smaller than I originally thought. It only takes a very small portion right in the middle, I thought it took up more of the ceiling than it did. Regardless it was still an amazing sight to see and will remember it forever. After leaving the museum we went to St. Peter's square and went into St. Peter's. Inside was absolutely gorgeous, it had tall arched ceilings and beautiful statues, paintings and architecture everywhere! Next we went down into the tombs of the Pope's where I saw Pope John Paul II tomb and all of the flowers and messages people have left. Quite an amazing moment to be standing there. Once we were done with St. Peter's we decided to go to the famous Trevi fountain.

     The Trevi fountain was an amazing place to just sit and relax, but we only stayed for a little before heading back to the room and took a nap after a long day of walking. We ended up sleeping for about two hours and when we woke up we went out to a pub where we had some delicious beers! They were mainly a mix of German and Italian beers.

     Saturday we woke up and headed out to the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Pantheon. The Colosseum was very impressive and quite the sight to see. The weather was absolutely beautiful both days we were there in the 70's. We walked everywhere on Saturday and by the time we had to leave I was exhausted. We caught a bus shuttle around 7 to the airport and headed back to London on our flight. The trip was a great time and the city was absolutely gorgeous to walk around in! I'll put some pictures up to give you guys some idea of what I saw. Well now I have to go take some finals and it's basically the last thing to do before my parents are here! Until next time!