Just Rome-ing Around

Rome wasn’t built in day, but you can definitely see it all in three or four. That was Pam and my opinion, anyway. Rome really grew on me while I was there. It’s a lot smaller than Paris, so waaay smaller than London, but that made seeing all the sights really feasible. And that was our plan. Also, I was happy to find that most people were able to converse with us in English and were incredibly friendly.

Day 5--The day my calves will never forget:
After arriving to Rome around lunchtime, Pam and I had our first genuine Italian food at a little pizzeria across the street from our hostel. Our pizzas were good, but in general, I wasn’t overly impressed by the Italian food we had on our trip, but this is likely because we chose the cheapest ones we could find. I have no doubt that the higher-priced ones serve the most amazing Italian food you can get.

We decided afterwards to just explore the area nearby, but we kept getting curious by things we saw, and ended up walking literally one-half of the city. We explored the ruins around the Roman Forum and Trajan Markets, dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D.


Me with the Trajan Markets, the world's first shopping centers. As a female, I really appreciated this bit of history.

Knowing that we were going to see these areas more in detail later, we decided to see the famous Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps, both huge tourist attractions.


The beautiful Trevi Fountain. You are supposed to throw coins over your shoulder into the fountain--the first to make a wish and the second to return to Rome. I didn't know about the second one, so I don't know if I'll ever make it back to Rome. Hopefully I do though.


The busy Spanish steps.


They look prettier during the summer when they are full of flowers.


Me on the steps.

Walking a bit further, we entered a great park that housed the Museo Borguese, an art museum we were interested in visiting that housed what we at first thought was Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, David. Turns out that it actually is in a museum in Florence, so I guess it’s good that we didn’t pay that time. All the walking sufficiently wore us out for the day, so we had a relaxed chill night at the hostel.

Pam and I stayed at a pretty cool youth hostel, but through a mistake in booking, ended up being in separate rooms. At first, we were kind of worried about staying with six or seven people we didn’t know at all, but it ended up being really cool. During my four nights there, I ended up rooming with a French family, guys from Japan, girls from Argentina, a girl from Mexico and a couple of Americans. (The variety coming from the fact that people left and arrived to the hostel on different nights. I had new roomies almost every night.) It was a cool cultural mesh that I haven’t experienced here yet. Pam had just as much diversity going on in her room, so I got to meet a bunch of other people that way. As long as you’re laid back and open to the rooming-with-strangers situation, these kinds of hostels are definitely the way to go.

Check out more photos by copying and pasting this link to my Facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=37878517&l=6dc60&id=15921830.