Day 16- Civitavecchia to Rome, Italy

After touching Italian land for the first time a group headed straight to the post office to mail our post cards we gathered in Spain. We thought this would be a good way to spend our time before heading to Rome when Sam finished her trip to the youth home. The post office was such a bad idea of how to spend the first two hours in Italy. After getting our train tickets to Rome we found the post office and took a number to wait in line. Problem one was that there was a box with several options of different tickets to take. We didn’t know what the options meant so we took a variety of numbers and waited…and waited…and waited.  Finally we asked someone who spoke a little English what the different tickets meant and realized we didn’t have the right one. We had to wait again for our number and then finally got to speak to the lady at the desk. Because we were mailing to the U.S. we had to wait while she put all the addresses into the computer and got us the right postage. Some of us left before we were done to go meet Sam at the ship and get ready to head to Rome. We had a quick but tasty lunch on the ship. Then booked it back to the train station at the last minute and walked right on to the train for our next adventure.

 

After about an hour and twenty minutes on the train we arrived in Rome. We started looking for our hostel which ended up being quite an ordeal. We wandered through China town and found the correct address right on the other side. We waited and knocked on doors but couldn’t find anyone to help us or an office at that address. Finally I just called the number and someone came to meet us. Apparently there are hostels associated with this one place and they meet you at the main location and take you to the one where you are staying. So we walked back into China town and went through some crazy alley ways until we reached Twins B&B. The B&B is really a lady’s home where she rents out rooms to tourists. The six of us were the only ones staying with her and she ended up being like a host mother to us. We dropped our bags and headed out to explore Rome.

 

We walked straight to the Coliseum and jumped in a rather long line to get tickets. The tickets are supposed to let us into a variety of places including the Roman Forum and Caesar’s tomb. Right when we got into the main part of the Coliseum it started pouring rain but we kept walking around anyway. It’s pretty crazy to think of that huge place filled with people and having animals running around the middle.  Not much has changed between ancient Rome and modern day football games. I had dinner with some of the group at a place called Ristorante Alfredo where I tried real Italian gnocchi. It was similar to the gnocchi I tried in Argentina but probably more authentic. After dinner and some primping we headed to the Spanish Steps to meet up for a pub crawl. I wish I had some history of the steps to share but it was so completely packed with young people ready for a crazy night that I didn’t learn much about then. Forum Pub Crawl is a fairly popular thing for tourists especially during the summer. This night was special for Canada Day so we got souvenir t-shirts to commemorate the occasion. We went to three bars and were supposed to end at a disco. Not all of us had enough energy to make it all night so half went back to the hostel and half went on to the disco. I went back and two girls got in bed when the rest of us realized that we only had one bedroom key. The people who went to the disco had the other two so the remaining three people fell asleep in the hallway waiting for the party animals to return. The hostel lady came out and found us asleep in the middle of the night and thankfully let us into our rooms. It was a wild night but certainly one to remember!

 

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I met an Aggie at a bar in Rome!

 

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I was embarrassed that the lady found us sleeping in her hall way, she must have thought we were drunk. Don’t worry, we weren’t.