Pictures
They gave us a muffin in the morning for breakfast on the train, which just made me feel ripped off! I wish they would have given us a little bit more! We walked from the Termini train station to the Alessandro Downtown Hostel. We couldn’t check in so we just put our bags into their luggage room and got the essential stuff (cameras and water bottles). From the hostel, we walked toward the Colosseum. We saw the church dedicated to Santa Maria Maggiore. There was an obelisk in front, and actually, there are quite a few obelisks in Rome. We got to the Colosseum and it was big! Waited in line to get tickets to enter, and it didn’t take too long. It was really impressive and large! In its day it could fit 50,000 people. Very few seats actually remain. It was built out of brick, but I guess it had a marble facade over everything. That would have been insane. Where the floor would have been, we could see the tunnels which they used to move props and animals around and before they upgraded things, they could actually flood the entire area and do plays of naval battles there. Part of a wooden floor had been reconstructed to show what it looked like. It would have really been impressive to see a play or gladiator battle there.
From there we walked to Palatino Hill. It is one of Rome’s seven hills. There were huge ruins of palaces, buildings, temples and the Roman Forum. One thing though… it was hot as blazes! Rome reminds me of Florida. Very muggy, which makes even the slightest heat nearly unbearable. As I sit here, I have a think film of gross from the day. We didn’t do it, but I would recommend getting either a guided tour or an audio tour of things. I sort of wish I could have heard the history of the things we were seeing, instead of just looking at them, but maybe next time, right?
It was still really impressive seeing all these ruins which were hundreds or thousands of years old. I can’t even imagine what things were like back then. Probably just as hot! The roads in Rome and Paris feel like they were laid out by drunks! They are not in grids at all and for each american block there might be 6 roads. And 8 way intersections seem like Roman roulette!
After the Roman forum we ended up walking back because it was so freaking hot! We showered for the first time since Interlaken and it was nice. I was unbelievably sweaty from walking around! We then fell asleep for a while, and woke up for the free pasta dinner. It was small plate with a small portion of pasta… barely even quantifiable as free dinner at all! But they did let us get seconds, and then I ate the stuff the girls next to us didn’t finish. So, all in all, even though it was pretty bland, I did get a decent meal.
After eating, Chuck and I took our dirty clothes to a laundromat. We were completely out of clean clothing. I wore my pajama shorts and the jacket I brought and chuck did similar. I felt pretty trashy walking around like that… especially without a shirt! Anyway, we paid 10 euro to wash and dry a large load. Took about an hour, and the guy there even took care of it all. The guy at the hostel desk gave us a little thing for free soap, which was also nice. For that hour we just came back to the hostel and read. We got our clothes back (though some were a bit damp), folded them all up, and then went to sleep.
We went to bed early because we wanted to go to the Vatican City early the next morning. During the night I heard a few of our roommates come back from the pub crawl. I heard one of them crying in the bathroom. I imagine she had too much to drin and was puking. Seeing as the pub crawl costs 20 euro, it seems like a great use of money, right? Luckily, I fell back to sleep quickly.