March 28: Next thing I know, I'm waking up on a runway in Rome - well at the airport about 20 minutes outside the city. It was about 7:00 in the morning, and I headed off to buy a bus ticket from the tobacco shop. Unfortunately, the bus I needed wasn't running that day. Figures, right? I figured what the heck, I didn't have any plans, and hopped the next bus that said it eventually met up with the metro lines. Well, it was the slow route I guess, but that meant I got to take a 2 hour tour of the Italian country side, seeing a side that I didn't get to on my last trip there. After the bus ride, I took the metro into the city center and searched out my hostel. Lucky for me, it was only about 2 minutes walking from the central station!Unluck
y for me, I couldn't check in for another 4 hours. I dropped my bag off in luggage storage, and started talking to some Italian guy who was currently living in London about - you guessed it- American politics! I decided to see at least a couple of the sights even though I had just been there a couple months earlier. I hit up the big market, practiced the few words I know in Italian, and managed to get the making of a nice picnic lunch. I enjoyed it under the fountain at Repubblica (top) while people/traffic watching. First lesson in Italy: traffic is as insane as it looks. Crosswalks do not matter. If you want to cross the street, you walk into the middle of oncoming traffic and hope you don't get hit. I'm not exaggerating. It's the only way to get anywhere. It's really a hard concept to get used to the first time.
y for me, I couldn't check in for another 4 hours. I dropped my bag off in luggage storage, and started talking to some Italian guy who was currently living in London about - you guessed it- American politics! I decided to see at least a couple of the sights even though I had just been there a couple months earlier. I hit up the big market, practiced the few words I know in Italian, and managed to get the making of a nice picnic lunch. I enjoyed it under the fountain at Repubblica (top) while people/traffic watching. First lesson in Italy: traffic is as insane as it looks. Crosswalks do not matter. If you want to cross the street, you walk into the middle of oncoming traffic and hope you don't get hit. I'm not exaggerating. It's the only way to get anywhere. It's really a hard concept to get used to the first time.
From there, I wandered down to the Trevi fountain to toss in a coin. There's a legend that if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, you'll make it back to Rome. I thought it was cheesy the first time I did it, but I was back, so I did it again. :)
Since I had already been to nearly all of the big tourist sites last time I was in Rome, I just wandered the outskirts, enjoying the things that were a little different. One of the more interesting things I saw was someone actually making the paintings that are sold on the streets. I always thought they were just copies and whatnot, but this guy was just working away. They were incredible.I walked by the Roman Forum, and the Collosseum since everyone says they look different based on the seasons. Either someone lied, or t
he seasons haven't changed yet. Anyways, I was walking around the plaza at the Collosseum, and in his defense I may have been walking a bit close. "He" was a horse, and he was either trying to bite me, or beat the crap out of my shoulder with his face. It caught me completely off guard and hurt like the dickens. Oh, and while walking in the plaza, I saw the same goofy guy performing that I had seen when I was here last time. It was amusing because my friend had found him particularly interesting when we were here, and this time there were a couple of guys who got up to dance with him while waiting in line for the Collosseum.
he seasons haven't changed yet. Anyways, I was walking around the plaza at the Collosseum, and in his defense I may have been walking a bit close. "He" was a horse, and he was either trying to bite me, or beat the crap out of my shoulder with his face. It caught me completely off guard and hurt like the dickens. Oh, and while walking in the plaza, I saw the same goofy guy performing that I had seen when I was here last time. It was amusing because my friend had found him particularly interesting when we were here, and this time there were a couple of guys who got up to dance with him while waiting in line for the Collosseum.Well, it had been really hot all day, and I was still dressed in a wool sweater and jacket from Budapest, so I headed back to the hostel for a shower, free pasta dinner, and sleep by 8:30!
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