I am full of pasta and pizza...Rome

This was written on April 3rd...

Hey guys!
So I am on the train between Rome and Florence right now as I am writing this. I am looking at the window at green hillsides, country houses and sheep and pastures out the window. I'm thinking that because I will be in Italy for 8 days and every single day will be packed with stuff, I'll write a blog while I'm on the train between cities in order to best document my trip. The reason why we are able to spend a whole week in Italy is because it's holy week and we don't have school. Here's our itinerary for this week. We flew out of Seville on Wednesday night (we skipped school on Thursday and don't have school on Friday) and just spend two days in Rome. Now we’re on a train to Florence where we'll spend two more days. After that we'll take a train to Venice, spend two days there and THEN take a train back to Rome to spend two more days before flying back to Seville in time for Good Friday and Easter. How many times can I say I can't believe how blessed I am?

So we flew into Rome two days ago and have been having the time of our lives. After getting into the Rome airport and checking into our hostel (Kelsey booked us an AMAZING hostel, it was just as good as a hotel), we decided to venture out into the neighborhood to get something to eat. Let me tell you something right now, every single meal that I have had since I have been here has been one of the most amazing meals I have eaten in my entire life. Just about 80 percent of the restaurants I've seen here have had pasta and pizza. I don't know if that's a tourist thing or if it really IS the only thing that Italians eat. We woke up the next morning, got dressed, ate some more amazing food and then went to a hotel to meet our tour guide for a tour of Italy. Nancy, Steph's mom, had heard of this amazing tour from multiple travel guides. During this tour, an English-speaking driver picks you up, takes you to all the important landmarks in Rome and tells you all about the historical significance. She was so excited about it that she offered to pay for it for us as a gift (WHAT a gift, right?). So we are standing outside the hotel and we see this Mercedes Benz parked across in front. When we ask the guy at the front desk, he tells us that this is the right car. We go up to the window and there's this big Italian guy reading a book. We knock and the window and say "Is this the tour of Italy?". He nods. We get in the car and everyone is dead silent; the driver doesn't introduce himself or say hi or anything. Steph asks "So how does this work?". The driver says in a THICK Italian accent "I don't understand". Silence and shifty eyes begin. Then he says "Where do you want to go?" We, knowing nothing about Rome, say "Wherever you want". So basically, as you can see, this is not what we expected. He did try to explain to us information about Rome, but his English was HORRIBLE so we didn't really learn anything. If we asked questions he would say "I don't understand." BUT overall, it was still AMAZING. Even though we didn't get any information, he did take us to the Trevi Fountain, The Coliseum, the Spanish Steps, the Forum, The Pantheon and some other important spots all in 3 hours. Even though Nancy was furious that the tour wasn't what she was told, to say that we were spoiled that day would be an understatement.

While we were on this tour, we turned a corner to drive down this really narrow, one way road in between two buildings. As we did, literally hundreds of tourists in the street had to squish up against the walls in order to get out of our way. People were GLARING at us through the windows. We were also in a Mercedes so people would peek in our windows as we drove by. Just to be funny, I started waving out the windows. Kels and Steph joined. Soon we had even MORE people peering in our windows and I had tourists as far as the eye could see waving BACK. I think from my confident waving, they might have thought we were famous or they should know who we are. It was hilarious.

Later that night, our friend Sarah who goes to CU and is also studying in Sevilla met up with us. We went on a Spanish Steps pub crawl and were taken around Rome to some really good bars where we met some really cool English speaking people (from Britain, New Zealand and Canada) and had a really good time talking about all of our travel adventures. It's pretty normal to find English speaking people in big tourist cities because it's a heck of a lot harder to hang with someone who isn't good at your language. Also I'm not going to lie, I LOVE listening to all the different accents.

The next morning, we woke up and went to the Vatican. I think that out of everything in Rome, the Vatican was the sight that I was the most excited about seeing. While I am not Catholic, one of my best friends from high school is Catholic and I find it SO interesting. Also, I love the history of the Christian church in Rome. We got there and figured that we would spoil ourselves with a guided tour through the city because we were a little sick of going to these awesome sights and having no idea why they were so important. It really was worth the extra money. We learned SO much about Roman and Christian history. I saw the Sistine Chapel and was blown away. My favorite section of the ceiling is "the touch" (even though they're not touching) between Adam and God. It was so cool to see the God was reaching so far to try to reach Adam and Adam is barely lifting a finger in response. It really was breathtaking but I have to say it hurt my neck haha. Then we continued on to St. Peter's Basilica and the Square. After the Sacra Coeur in Paris, this church was one of my favorite churches I've seen in Europe (trust me, I have seen A LOT). It was also HUGE. Sadly, the line to the top of the Culpa was extremely long and we had to catch a train, so I didn't get to go to the top of the dome. But it was interesting because the Pope was in the Vatican City, even though I didn't see him. It was just cool to know that he was there. So After the Vatican City, we got on our train to Florence.

So that's about it for this post, I'll write about Florence on my next train ride to Venice in two days. Hopefully, I can find a place that has wifi so I can post these while I'm here and not just put up 3 blogs at once when I get back. Thanks again for reading!

P.S. The weather in Rome was STUNNING. I had read before we left Spain that it was going to be cloudy and rainy all day the two days we were going to be there, but to our surprise, it was sunny and the sky was so BLUE. Only down side was I left the hostel with my rain boats, sweater, jacket and umbrella. Needless to say, I had a lot of extra things to carry that day.