Day 15...Well I guess I will be returning to Rome someday!

Day 15, June 29th:

Buon Giorno from Italia!  Today is my first day in ITALY and I am headed to ROME!!!!  The ship pulled into port at 08:00 and I got to get off around 10:00.  It takes forever to get the ship cleared and then get your passports and amigos ready to leave for a 5-day trip around Italy.  The later part of that takes the longest…you know girls!  Heather, Danielle, Sarah, Lindsey, Amy and I made waves towards the Civitavecchia Train Station.  We were so excited to be going to Rome!  The train took about an hour and then we walked all the way to the hostel about 25 minutes away.  We dropped off our bags and began exploring! 

What else do you do in Rome (besides eat gelato)?  EXPLORE!!!  I love how SASers EXPLORE!  We make plans, don’t follow them, look at a map long enough to figure out where we want to go, put the map away and EXPLORE!  If we get lost, then you see something you wouldn’t have seen otherwise and you then can pull out the map and reorient ourselves.  It is so much fun exploring everything.  Many SASers don’t like to plan everything out minute by minute, we just like exploring and seeing what we can see. 
Our first stop was the Colosseo.  We took the underground metro there and when we got out of the station there was no way that you would miss this massive piece of history!  It would have bitten us on the nose if it were a snake.  It was so startling!  I have seen pictures, but they do not do justice for what it looks in person.  It is enormous!  We couldn’t take it all in without grabbing a bite to eat, so we decided to eat at a restaurant across the street, called Antica Domus.  Aren’t you jealous?  You should be!  It was awesome.  My first meal in ITALY was looking at the Colosseo!  That is when it really hit me that I was in ITALY!!!!!!!!!!!!

After Heather, Danielle and I stuffed our face full of penne with meat sauce and a margareta pizza we went back to exploring.  As seen in previous posts, the three of us usually end of sharing all of our food so we can try as much as we can in the few days in each country.  That is soo the way to go because all of the food is scrumptious!  Okay while I am on this subject (and I am writing this post days later), can you believe that they don’t have chicken or eggplant parm or anything marsala in ITALY?  WTF!  This is not fair!  I really wanted to try the authentic cuisine only to find out that American restaurants trick us into believing we are eating Italian food!  I am soooooo mad!  I really wanted to indulge in all of these dishes, but I guess I can’t!  Sorry for the little interruption, but I was mad! 

So after lunch, we headed to see the Arco di Constantino (right by the colosseo), Foro Romano (all kinds of ruins we passed along side of this huge road that only one car went down the entire hour we were walking down the middle of it taking pictures), Vittoriale (a really big white building that I don’t know what is really is but looks cool and had some cool statues of horses in front of it and on top), the Pantheon (btw did you know that the dome on top of it is completely open to the world…the roof has an opening because when it was built they didn’t know how to completely fill in the top of the dome), Piazza Navona, Piazza Colonna, the Prime Minister’s Office Building (they had military people with real swords in the doorways), the Parliament Building (those guys had machine guns), the Fontana di Trevi,  and Trinita Deo Monti (which translates to Spanish Steps in my book…at least that’s what we call them).  As you can tell, we didn’t explore Roma at all today!  I think we saw almost everything Rome has to offer in one day!  That’s SAS style for ya!  Millions of picture stops also occurred throughout the day!!!!!!!! 

We then ate dinner by the Trevi Fountain at a place called Osteria.  The three of us split a buffalo mozzarella and salami pizza and a bowl of heart shaped raviolis stuffed with buffalo mozzarella.   Both were excellent!  Buffalo mozzarella is different than when we get in the US because it comes from…well buffalo milk.  Daniel also wanted to try a real Italian wine so I gave it a taste.  I found out that even if others think it is amazing, it could be really nasty to you and it was just that: nasty.  It was a local red wine and everyone else thought it was the best they ever had.  The waiter also got made at us for sharing stuff.  So apparently the Italian restaurants in the US fail us again.  There is no “family style Italian dining.”  Ohh well!  We all want to taste everyone else’s food too.  On our way back to the hostel, we swung by a gelato shop (as always) and I had banana and walnut gelato for 2 euro.  It was so amazing!  That combo was so delicious…one of the best so far!  If that was not enough, Heather and I were dying for a cannoli, so we then found a bakery and split a massive cannoli!  It was so delicious! 

After engulfing ourselves in our second dessert, we headed back to the hostel, which was hotter than hell when we returned.  It was sooooo hot.  After our long day of trekking, we all really wanted to take a shower, but we soon found out that the showerhead was broken.  We had to hold the shower nozzle up while showering in a very small shower (now don’t forget I have showered in the tiny ship shower for days and this is being labeled as a very small shower…it was superrrrrrrr tiny).  We also only had 2 plugs in the entire room for the 6 of us.  It was a fun night after all.  We ended the day about 23:30.  Day 1 was amazing, but I can’t wait for the rest of ITALIA!!!!  Ciao!

Learn Italian (in 5 words):

Cheese=formaggio  (very useful when taking pictures…formaggio!) (4-ma-geo)
Grazie=thank you  (grat-z-ahh)
Prego=your welcome (like the sauce)
Buon Giorno=good day (bon gour-no)
Ciao=goodbye (chow…as in what puppy’s eat)

and so I don't forget: 

If you throw 1 coin in the Trevi Fountain (with your back facing the fountain using your right hand and throw the coins over you left shoulder without looking) it means that you will come back to Rome, 2 coins means that you are looking for love and 3 means you are looking for a divorce.  I am coming back to ROME!!!!!!!!