Roma Reunion

The conductor woke us up once we hit Rome. It is always a strange feeling waking up in an entirely different city. It’s like someone put a blindfold on you and spun you around in circles. Kind of like pin the tail on the donkey but instead of pins and donkeys, we are using trains and world cities. We found our way to the information desk and asked them about a camping hostel that Alex had told us about. We purchased a Roma pass as well which covered all of my transportation and allowed a couple free entrances to two museums, monuments, or ruins.

We checked into our hostel and instantly hit up the pool. It was a really nice hostel. They had several dozen tents set up for people to accommodate and also had camping spots for those who had their own equipment. We played beach volleyball also which was so much fun. We didn’t linger for too long before we got a quick bite to eat at the hostel supermarket and got ready to head to the Spanish Steps to see Vanessa.

We got some cheap boxes of vino and hung out on the steps for a while and then trekked over to the Trevi Fountain to enjoy the waterworks with what seemed like every tourist in the city. We all tossed in coins for hopes to return once again and had fun with the guys selling flowers and trying to take your picture for money. We sang song and climbed parts of the fountain that wouldn’t get us kicked out and then had to get to the Metro. Our last rain left around midnight which didn’t really give us much time to play but we didn’t want to pay for a taxi considering we already had purchased the two day metro pass. We said farewell to Vanessa and were off on a drunken metro/bus ride back to the hostel. Lindsey and I were singing annoyingly the whole time. Beautiful.

The next day we planned on meeting up with Vanessa again at the Vatican because the Pope was going to giving a service in front of St. Peters Basilica. We failed miserably at rendezvousing with her but it didn’t matter. We still got to hit up the Pope Party. Later, went on doing our tourist thing and jumped on some free tours at the Coliseum and the Palatines. Brandon and I went back to the Vatican afterwards to see St. Peters Basilica and the gallows since Brandon had never had the experience. Lindsey and Ramsey just wanted to go back to sleep. After we couldn’t handle walking anymore, we caught the next bus back o the hostel and meet back up with Linds and Ramsey. We then went back into town to meet up with Vanessa since we had missed her before. I brought her some wine to apologize for missing her earlier. We met up with her at the Parthenon and went to a nearby restaurant to get a quick bite to eat. The gang wanted to catch the lat bus back to the campsite which left nearly 45 minutes after we had just arrived. I thought it was silly and decided to hang out with Vanessa for a while longer and get to see Rome at night. It was so amazing! It is a completely different world in the dark. The moon was shining bright that night as well so we got to see it all under the moonlight. Even though the coliseum isn’t all that impressive anymore, it is one of my favorites. There is just some kind of magic I feel when I’m there.

We ended up making it until sunrise and caught the first train back towards our places of rest. I didn’t get back to the campground until 7 in the a.m. and we had to be out of there by 9. You do the math. I was tired. We made it to the train station on time though and caught our next ride to Croatia. I hadn’t heard much about this country so I was excited for this adventure. Things always seem to work out much better when you have little or no expectation at all.