By Zeus's beard!

Ready for Rome with our Europe travel book! Me and Nicole in front. Back: Skyler, Katie, Joe, and Stephen
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ROMA! Friday morning at 2 a.m. Stephen, Skyler, Nicole, Joe, Katie and I left on the shuttle to Hahn Airport in attempt to fly to Rome once again. This time we actually made it, flying out of Frankfurt around 6 a.m. and arriving in Rome around 8:30 a.m. Since the hostel we booked was around half an hour out of the city we decided to store our luggage in the train station and begin our day. We jumped on the metro and headed to the Vatican first thing, walking straight inside. Apparently we lucked out, as usually lines can be up to two hours long. The museum was absolutely incredible. Not only did we see many famous pieces of art, but the architecture of the building itself was especially ornate. One long hallway was completely covered in gold plating and design. Once we weaved through a good portion of the museum we made our way to the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful-one of those things you’ve heard about since you were young, and seen pictures of a hundred times over and yet so amazing to see in person. To quote “Good Will Hunting” I have now smelled the Sistine Chapel! Side note: I was a rebel and took a picture. Just after we finished looking at the chapel, the museum was closing for the daily Italian siesta. We probably could have stayed a little longer, however, we didn’t want to waste precious time just waiting for it to reopen nor did we want to return later in the day. Therefore, we left and ate our first gelato of the weekend just outside the Vatican. So…good! Once we finished eating we decided to walk around to see the Basilica St. Pietro, the cathedral of the Vatican. We ended up taking the long way around, accidentally, and saw a good portion of the city in the meantime. When we finally arrived we spent a while wandering around the impressive piazza open preceding the basilica, taking pictures and enjoying the Roman sunshine. Since the line was extremely long we decided to return the next morning, although later we found out that the line was for something entirely different!

Entering the Vatican. It is surrounded entirely by huge walls.
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Upon leaving the Vatican area we took the metro to the Spanish Steps. There we again basked in the glorious sunshine and walked up to the Trinita dei Monti cathedral. Though we did not go inside we had an absolutely breathtaking view of the city. After the Spanish Steps we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. The fountain, one of my most favorite sites was spectacular! The architecture, evening lighting, everything made it absolutely stunning. After throwing in our coins, one coin to return to Rome someday and a second coin for a wish, we walked to a nearby gelato stand. This time I had mint and as always, so…good. Our final sight of the day was the Pantheon. At dusk it was astounding. It honestly gave several of us chills. It is mind blowing to see such a prominent, imposing building and think that it was constructed thousands of years ago. It really doesn’t make sense! Inside was just as commanding, if not more with its rounded ceiling with a large hole at the top, designed for perfect acoustics. After satisfied with our tour of the Pantheon, we decided it was most definitely time for dinner. We wound our way back through the small streets to a small Italian restaurant. I ate ravioli for dinner with wine and bread and everyone else had their share of delicious food as well. Love the Italian food!

To quote “Good Will Hunting” I have now smelled the Sistine Chapel!

the long hallway in the Vatican covered with intricate detail
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Finally we decided to call it a day seeing as we hadn’t slept the previous night. Well, as I mentioned before our hostel was a ways out of the city. We really didn’t mind since it was right next to the Mediterranean and we thought we might have some quality beach time. Well….not so much. After training all the way outside the city we followed the directions the hostel had given us only to arrive in the middle of nowhere, not to mention that the area we were in was essentially the ghetto of Rome. We wandered for a little bit, finally stopping to ask a local for directions. He pointed us in the right direction, however, in leaving he warned us, “Not safe…watch yourselves.” Yeah ok…we got it. Then he says, “The people of the hostel, they...,” and he started making hand motions over his face. “African?” we asked. “Yes,” he said, “do not look them in the eye.” Well, we were officially sketched out, but decided we might as well check it out, since one never knows. As a general standard of Murphy’s Law, we still couldn’t find the hostel as we continued to become more and more worried. At one point we even noticed a man following us, though he quickly halted at our acknowledgement. By the time we finally found the correct street we decided we wanted to get the hell out! Haha! Seriously though, enough was enough. We trained all the way back into Rome only to find the metro closing just as we stepped off the train. We wandered for awhile, looking for a hotel, only to discover they wanted to charge us 500 Euro for two rooms for six of us. Eventually we got on a bus and headed back to the area next to the main train station where we FINALLY found a small hotel to crash. Although exhausted, we were all safe.