Rome if you want to!

Ciao!

This past weekend my roommate Mel and I ventured south to Rome to visit my cousin, Alex and to visit Mel's friend Keith. We had appointments to finalize our "Permesso di Soggiorno" on Friday morning and didn't know how long they would take so we planned to leave around dinner time. We took the fast train to Termini, in Rome, at 6:10 and arrived around 7:45. We then walked to our hostel, which was super close and just took about 15 minutes, and got settled before meeting Alex and her friends for dinner. We met them in front of the Pantheon and went to a delicious dinner where I had the best Carbonara that I've had yet in Italy! After dinner we walked to the Trevi Fountain, which was absolutely beautiful at night. After stopping for a little gelato we then made our way to the Spanish Steps. We walked around the piazza a bit and then walked all the way up the steps for a beautiful view. We spent time just chatting and taking some photos up there before Mel and I took a cab back to our hostel since we were pretty tired from traveling. 

The next day Mel and I got up around 10am to head over to the Colosseum. We were really lucky to have BEAUTIFUL weather (65-70 degrees F). We waited in line for about an hour, which went by pretty fast, and walked around the Colosseum for about an hour or so before walking over to Piazza Navona where we were meeting her friend Keith for lunch. We stopped by the Pantheon on our way to Piazza Navona and went inside to take some photos and do the touristy thing a bit more. We then walked around the Piazza a bit before meeting Keith at 2:30. We had a delicious lunch of our own mini personal pizzas at Caffee Bernini, outside in the sun right on the Piazza. I had a Pizza Neopolitana, which was cheese pizza with anchovies. Needless to say, I wasn't asked to share :) Haha. It was so good! After lunch we wandered around and did some shopping along the streets around Piazza Navona and then got some gelato, of course. We then walked over towards the river and did a bit more shopping there before leaving Keith to go back to our hostel. We rested up for a bit at the hostel before heading out to dinner. We got dinner at a small little family restaurant a few blocks from the hostel and both had simple green salads and pasta again. We also had some fantastic Chianti Classico. We went back to the hostel after dinner to get ready and then meet Alex and her friends at Piazza Navona to go out for the night. We met more new people that weren't at dinner the night before and walked around going to several different bars. At the end of the night we had to search/wait forever to find a taxi back to our hostel since it was so late but we eventually found one and got home around 3:30 or so.

We had a relatively early start on Sunday morning because we had to be checked out of the hostel by 10:30am and it was the European daylight savings that night so we got up at about 10:20 and scrambled to get ready and out of the hostel as quickly as we could. We kept our bags with us for the day, which was kind of annoying but both of us had packed pretty lightly so it wasn't too bad. We started the day going to the Forum and walked around there for an hour or two before heading to the Trevi Fountain again, just to see it during the daytime. It was so crowded there that we just took a few photos and wandered down a side street to find some panini for lunch. While we were eating lunch on a small bench outside the place where we got our panini, one of Alex's friends and his parents happened to walk by so we chatted with them for a little bit and after finishing lunch we walked toward Piazza Spagna and the Spanish Steps. We did a bit of shopping down the designer street near the Piazza and just walked around enjoying the warm weather for the second day in a row! We then walked to Piazza Barberini, where my family and I had stayed in a hotel when we visited Italy several years ago. We sat down and rested on a bench by the fountain in the middle of the Piazza for a bit before walking to the train station to catch a train back to Florence. We both had homework and stuff to do Sunday evening so we didn't want to get back too late. We ended up catching a train around 3:30 so we were back home by about 5pm. 


Altogether it was a fantastic weekend! Mel and I were really happy with everything we crammed into our short time there and it was so nice to see Alex again. I'm so happy that I've been able to see Lauren and now Alex twice already this semester! I am currently sitting on campus in our cafe waiting for class in about a half hour; and thus starts another busy week before another fun weekend!


Hope all is well with everyone, I love and miss you all!
For more photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2078989&id=1232820029&l=f54cf7e180