Rome

Well I’m back from Italy and heading back to the States on Monday. It’s kind of bitter sweet because I’m really going to miss all of the girls on the trip and being in Europe, but I’m also super excited to go home and see my family and friends. The past whole week I have been traveling around Italy! We started in Rome and then traveled to Sorrento and Capri. A lot happened on the trip so I’m going to try my best to recap on what I did.

On Saturday, July 3^rd we woke up at three in the morning and headed off to Rome. I only got three hours of sleep so the early morning was a little bit of a struggle. Our flight didn’t leave until 6:30 but we wanted to get there early because sometimes security can take awhile. Surprisingly, however, it went fairly quick so we just sat around and got some Starbucks while we waited. The flight took about three hours but it went by pretty fast because Andrea and I talked about the whole way. Everyone else slept, which I should have done because by the time we got there I was exhausted.

Our plane landed about half an hour outside the city where we had to catch a bus to take us downtown. When we got off the bus our next task was to find our hostel, which was quite the task because it didn’t have the name on the building. Good thing we had the address and building number or we could have been walking in circles for hours. When we finally found the hostel we were greeted by a woman who told us our room was actually in another building a few blocks away and she was going to call her cousin Franco to take us there. It all seemed a little sketchy to me but when Franco got there he turned out to be a very nice guy and took care of us very well. The building we stayed in was super cute and looked just like the typical Italian buildings you see in the movies. Franco helped us take our bags upstairs, showed us how to use our keys, and then gave us directions to all the hot spots in Rome.

After we were all settled in we headed out and our first stop was the Coliseum. I can’t even express how amazing it was to see the huge structure. The Coliseum has so much history and it felt so unreal that I was actually seeing it with my own eyes. After the Coliseum we walked around Rome doing some shopping and also seeing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain. All of these structures were so cool to see! We ended the day at the Trevi Fountain where there where hundreds of tourists taking picture and making wishes as they threw in their coins. Before we returned to our hostel we treated ourselves to gelato, which is ten times better than I expected! It was a nice way to escape the extreme heat of the day. The heat was kind of a shock to all of us because the past six weeks we had been living in sixty-degree weather back in England. Hydration was very important while in Rome. We all bought water bottles and refilled them at every waterspout we came to. When we returned to our hostel around eight I was out about as soon as I hit the bed. It’s amazing how tired the heat can make you. Even though sleeping was extremely uncomfortable because of the heat I was surprisingly still able to sleep through the night.

Sunday was the Fourth of July and we were all pretty sad that we were missing the festivities back home. In celebration we took pictures of everything American we saw and sang our national anthem walking down the streets of Rome. We got some strange stares that day. (haha) We wanted to go to a church service on Sunday but found out that in order to enter any church or place of worship your shoulders and knees have to be completely covered. It was way to hot to be walking around in warm clothing so we ended up not going but agreed that we would all go to the Vatican when we returned on Friday. We wanted to go to the Vatican on Sunday but found out it's closed on Sundays...go figure. We spent most of the day shopping and just taking it easy. We saw the spanish steps, walked back to Trevi Fountain, and then ended the day sitting in a park. We were kicked out of the park at eight because they were playing a movie that you had to pay for so we took our conversation back to our hostel, took showers, and went to bed.