The flight and bus to the city center in Rome went very
smoothly. We found our hostel, which we had picked based on the proximity to
the central train station and the fact that we had our own room.
After the Brussels hostel experience we were glad to have any room where we didn’t have to worry about snoring roommates.
After the Brussels hostel experience we were glad to have any room where we didn’t have to worry about snoring roommates.
We got dinner just outside of our hostel. I got spaghetti pomodoro and red wine and it was absolutely delicious. We frequently ordered bruschetta with meals too. Italian food is very, very good. It’s kind of a boring dish, but it’s done so well in Italy, and it’s my favorite. While we were there, a slightly tone deaf Italian man serenaded the restaurant with “Volare” and it felt very, very Italian.
Even though it’s October, Rome was sweltering hot. We slept with the window open and kicked off all the sheets.
We had to wake up early to meet Nick at the airport. We woke up early enough to get ready for the day. However, as per usual, things did not go exactly as planned.
According to Keisha I started shouting, “No, no, no, no, no!” like Michael Scott when Toby returns in The Office.
I had discovered a hosteller’s worst nightmare. Bedbugs.
I almost cried.
“Let’s go. We’re leaving right now,” Keisha announced. I didn’t hesitate. We grabbed our stuff and booked it out of the hostel room immediately. We got ready for the day on the train instead. That evening we found a Laundromat and washed everything. I wanted to make sure they were extra clean so I washed and dried them on the hottest setting… and ended up stripping my sweater of all its fuzziness. It was the price I paid to ensure I didn’t pick up any unwanted hitchhikers.
It was our friend Nick’s first time leaving the US and he was able to join us for the second half of our journey. "Meet us in Rome!" we told him.
This is Keisha, Nick, and me on my 21st birthday in Isla Vista. We had just gone swimming in the Pacific Ocean in this picture. Little did we know over a year later we would be on the other side of a different ocean together!
With the help of my mom, we had booked a vacation rental by owner for the three of us to stay in while we were in Rome. We took a cab to Campo de Fiori, a cute square that was filled with a daily market.
I had emailed the landlord to let her know when we would arrive. We all could only use our phones in wifi zones so we were unable to contact her further. We found the apartment but we couldn’t figure out how to get in. We waited for awhile, the three of us standing in a cobblestone alley holding multiple backpacks.
Keisha eventually tried buzzing all the apartments.
“Nicola?” she would try when each person answered.
“No,” they would reply and hang up.
We tried each one to no avail. Eventually Nick and I went to find an ancient relic called a payphone to try to get ahold of the landlord. Keisha waited at the apartment in case she arrived.
I felt incredibly useless trying to use the payphone. Nick and I fed it coins that it would just spit out and we pushed buttons that did nothing.
Luckily, a few minutes later Keisha found us to let us know that Nicola had arrived at the flat. It was a very cute place that was equipped with spaghetti, bread, and cheese (thanks Mom!). It overlooked a cute restaurant and we could hear all the hustle and bustle of Campo de Fiori.Campo de Fiori was a square that was filled every morning with a market. There were vendors selling fruit, spices, and clothing. It was very cute.
Once we got settled, we had the whole day ahead of us, so we grabbed a map and set out to see some sights. We grabbed cappuccinos and gnocchi at a restaurant in Campo de Fiori.
I have been to Rome a few times before, but it was fun showing the sights to my friends who had never seen them before. We found Rome to be a very walkable city and ended up not
We walked by the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. The Trevi Fountain at night is one of my favorite sights in Rome and I was disappointed to find that it was closed due to construction. This also became a running joke because multiple fountains we set out to see in various cities throughout our trip were also closed. It was not a fountain friendly vacation.
Pantheon
Atop the Spanish Steps
At the bottom of the Spanish Steps
Keisha and I also set a goal for at least one gelato a day and we were successful. We tried our best not to repeat flavors. I got chocolate, After 8, coffee, and tiramisu.
Our first night in Rome we decided to take it easy to help Nick adjust to the jetlag. We picked up a bottle of wine from a market and cooked pesto spaghetti in our apartment. We sat around teaching each other card games and betting with our mix of dollars, kroner, forint, and euro coins. It was a very fun and relaxing first night. We slept with our windows open welcoming the good, bad, and noisy sounds of the city: silverware clinking at the downstairs restaurant, mopeds speeding through the streets, people chatting, and the 2am street sweeper.
Day 2 in Rome started off as another ambitious sight seeing
day. We began our morning with scrambled eggs in the apartment then set out to
the Colosseum, making stops at any sights we found interesting.
Everywhere we turned there were people persistently trying to sell us stuff in the streets. The most common thing we saw being sold were these long sticks that held you iPhone so you could take a selfie from a distance. They reminded me of the children’s stick toy where you squeeze the handle and the claw or T Rex jaw or whatever it is on the end clamps down. We nicknamed them selfie sticks and mocked them senselessly. However, the longer we were there, the more we realized both the appeal and practicality of the selfie sticks. We did not however end up purchasing one and resorted to the old fashioned technique of awkwardly asking strangers to take pictures of us, which had mixed results.
We stopped at ruins, souvenir shops, and a monument.
To skip the line at the Colosseum, we went to the Forum
first and bought our tickets there. It was very muggy and we took frequent
breaks to sit in the shade of the ruins.
We then went to the Colosseum where we spent the majority of the time swimming upstream through hordes of tourists to find the stairs to the second level. We got to take a few laps around the Colosseum in our attempt to do so. The Colosseum is colossal: it’s quite impressive in its size, age, and endurance throughout history. It’s a very iconic building. Even though I’d been there before, I felt like you can’t go to Rome and not see the Colosseum.
After that we were quite hungry and thirsty. We deliriously shuffled the twenty minute walk back to the flat. The flat did not have wifi, which was a pro and a con. The pro was that we got to spend quality time together without anyone constantly checking their phone, the con was that we needed wifi to do a lot of things, including to book the next leg of our trip.
Exhaustion on the walk back
A few months ago Keisha and I were sitting in IV with a lengthy list of cities we wanted to see. We narrowed and narrowed the list, rearranged dates and cities, until we had a plan we liked. Even after that the plan changed several more times. Once we arrived the plan changed several times more. The biggest up in the air was the city we were going to go to after Rome. The most recent plan was to go to Prague, but Keisha and I talked about it and decided we would rather go to Greece. Nick was on board, so we went to lunch at a place that advertised free wifi (and it turns out that was their main draw, not the food).
I did however devour my pizza margharita while we attempted to plan our trip to Greece. We thought it would take an hour at most to figure out flights and hostels. Unfortunately, Greece quickly became extremely complicated. Flights were outrageously expensive and most had 14 hour layovers in random cities. For our purposes and our time limit, we couldn’t make it work, so we spent the next five hours ordering more and more cappuccinos to justify us hitting off their free wifi while we tried to figure out where to go next. (We were the only ones at the restaurant so we didn’t feel too bad, the locals all had their own wifi and better food).
While it was incredibly exciting to realize that we could really go anywhere, it was also stressful and we kept trying out different combinations of cities to make it work.
Eventually we decided on Paris. I was kind of ambivalent about going back to a city I had already been to. However, I am glad we did because one of my favorite nights of the whole trip was in Paris. You never know, it’s not always the place. (It’s sometimes the place). But usually it’s what you make of it.
We went back to the flat and hung out a little bit after that. Nick described how it felt like he felt more like a local by having our own place to go back to, as opposed to a touristy hostel or hotel.
Keisha and I got gelato and walked around Campo de Fiori and
bought jewelry from street vendors in the warm Roman evening.
We then went out and explored Piazza Navona. It was very calm at night and the fountain (this one was working) was lit up. It was fun to just walk around the streets.
There are taps that run freely all the time all over Rome. People use them to wash their hands or fill up their water bottles. If you place your finger under the tap, water comes out the top like a drinking fountain. They’re very handy considering how hot it is in Rome all the time. I tried to show Nick how they work and when it sprayed out the top, it went farther than I was expecting and got Nick. While I did not think anything of it, there was a waiter at a nearby restaurant who saw this and almost peed himself laughing.
Our last day in Rome we took a cab to Vatican City, not realizing how close it was to our flat. We spent the morning exploring the Vatican. We had to wait in a line to get in to the Basilica. The line looked intimidating, as it wrapped all the way around the square. It moved pretty quickly. It would have moved quicker if we hadn’t been cut by two large tour groups. The first one we were simply outnumbered and overpowered. We had no choice but to watch them one by one file around us. The second group was a gang of older couples all wearing red baseball caps. One feigned asking the lady in front of us in line for a photo while the rest squeezed in line. We blinked and they all managed to blend into the line. We were kind of impressed, but also annoyed, so Keisha grabbed me and Nick and pulled us determinedly around the second group.
Getting cut by the first group
St. Peter's Square
We did however make it into the Basilica. It’s a very impressive Basilica and very pretty. We walked around there for a bit before taking the 520 or so stairs to the top of the Basilica. The stairs narrowed and the walls curved as we climbed higher into the dome.
One of my favorite things to do in any city is to climb up to a vantage point and overlook the city. I also like walking around cities to get a feel for it, but I think the best way to orient yourself in a city and get a full appreciation for the beauty and color of a city is to see it from up high. I love going to the top of the Basilica.
We were dripping sweat though by the time we got to the top, and significantly more winded than both those older and younger than us. We climbed so many stairs this trip I feel inspired to go on a stairmaster every day when I get back to get in better shape.
We walked back from Vatican City to Campo de Fiori where we had a delicious lunch (yay spaghetti pomodoro!). We walked back very slowly, stopping whenever we felt like it to shop for souvenirs and at Piazza Navona again where we watched various street artists.
Rome was full of warm weather, sweet gelato, amazing pasta, strong cappuccinos, a few bottles of wine, several historical landmarks, and an exuberant language.
We went back to the flat, packed, cleaned up, and went out to a late dinner. We tried to go to bed early because unfortunately the only reasonable flight to Paris was at 6:30 in the morning. We had our landlord call us a cab to take us to the airport at 4:30 in the morning. We barely made it through the inefficient Ryanair check in and security. But we got to Paris so early, we had a full day ahead of us when we arrived.
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