The valley below is where they held chariot races and the hill is the former palace and location where Rome first formed.
Me at the Pantheon.
What's left of the Roman Forum.
The Coloseum!!
Now you are all in real trouble. I finally figured out how to upload photos, and just in time for my update on Rome! Woo hoo!! Here it goes:
As you can see below, I slept pretty well last night. I think I was pretty worn out from the last few days. But today I am (was...it's been a few days but let's just pretend I am writing it in Rome, ok?) rested and ready to go!
Pretty sweet bed head, don't ya think?!? I crashed out hard!
I had to check out of this B&B by 11am, so I packed up and headed to my next hostel. I had some booking complications, aka the expensive hotel reservation I couldn't get out of, so I have 3 nights in Rome at three different hostels/hotels. I know...not the best planning, but I'm rolling with it! I walked over to my new home for the night, which was literally 7 blocks away, and tried to get an early check in. The room wasn't ready yet, but they had a luggage room. Yes!
Oh yeah, this place is called The Yellow. It is a youth hostel that has a pretty cool energy and has wireless Internet which I used to book my next round of hostels. The Internet was only downstairs so I didn't have enough time to blog, sorry. :)
I was going to wander until it was time to check in but they recommended a walking tour. I went for it. This was the first tour I decided to pay for. Rome has so much history that I wanted to make sure I got the full story as I walked through the different sites. I had two hours before the tour started so I headed in that direction. I stopped to have lunch and even got my eyebrows waxed! (Only 4€ and very necessary since I didn't bring tweezers and was getting quite hairy!!)
Then it was tour time! Tad, a former history major with a lot of info and a great presentation laced with humor, was the tour guide. We started out with a twenty minute overview of Roman history, start to finish which all began on the hill in the picture above. I won't tell you the whole history of Rome but it is summed up with violence and over the top behavior. It was amazing to stand and pretend to see the various ruins throughout the tour and try to imagine what it must have looked like. Tour Guide Tad(TGT) did a great job of paintings pictures and helping us visualize what life was like back then.
After our first stop we went to the "Lie Detector" from the movie "Roman Holiday." Originally the lie
detector, a large circular stone with a face in the middle of it, was a manhole cover where all the street sewage ran. Now
people stick their hands in it and take pictures. :( I took a picture of those people because it made me smile! Unfortunately there's no room for all my pictures so you only get the highlights!
Then we moved on to the former Opera house. It was cool to see the various types of stone on the building. This happened because peope would loot old places and use it for building materials for new structures. The earliest form of recycling! The coolest thing about this place: people live in the multi-million dollar apartments on the top floor. They live in a freakin' ancient ruin. That's tight.
Next was the Jewish ghetto, where Jews were forced to live until religious freedom was granted. The ruler at the time let them build a temple higher than the Basilica, a major no-no, because it was in direct line of sight with the Pope's bedroom window (they obviously didn't get along) and this way the Pope would wake up, open his bedroom
window and see a Jewish temple! Do you understand why I loved this tour yet?? All these little nuggets. Love it!!
Off we went to the oldest ruins in the city. I only rember that there are a lot of cats there because there use to be a rat problem. To solve the rat problem, they imported cats from Egypt then forgot about them. Now cats are in random places all over the city. They are even recognized as Roman citizens (supposedly...he could have been BS-ing. Sometimes it was hard to tell!)
After that we went to the Roman Forum, the center of Roman politics. This is where thy held Senate and celebrations called Triumps when generals were especially brutal in war. They would cancel everything and parade the spoils of war for the people. It all ended with te execution of one of the major rulers/generals from the defeated area. I recorded this part with my iPhone. Really glad I did because it was a fantastic description. Email me of you want it and I'll email you the audio file!
Finally it was on to the Coloseum. TGT gdescrived a typical day were there were circus acts, animal fights, animal vs. men, and gladiator battles (usually a professional gladiator and a convict or slave). I didn't get this last part on film or record the audio, so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was awesome!
That was the end of the tour so I went to look at the inside of the Coloseum. I had another audio guide from The Homey, so I got to relive some of the things TGT talked about, with a few new things thrown in like the fact that the Coloseum is now a Catholic church. They did the same thing with the Pantheon and a few other locations. I guess it's a compliment by saying: this place rocks....let's claim it as one of our churches!
After the tour, which started at 2pm, I was sweaty and tired so I headed back to the hostel. I got into my mixed room to discover I was the only woman. Fantastic! They were all sleeping, it was after 7 so I guess I should have recognized the pre-party signs, so I grabbed my journal, phone, and train schedule to plan the next few days.
After planning and grabbing some dinner I headed up to the room at about 11:30 to find it deserted. Yes!! I took advantae by showering and getting ready for bed
I left the desk light on so they would know I was sleeping, and wouldn't turn on the overhead light. Right after I got into bed, the guy in the bunk above me came back. He was from Belgium and leaving early. We did the travel recap conversation, and he told me three of the other guys were from California. Cool! Maybe they'll be chill. I told him my plan about the light and he thought it was a good idea. Then one of the guys from California came in.
He asked the other guy what happened to his friend (I guess he slept in my spot the night before). He said they ha to move him. Cali turned to me and asked: how does it feel to separate two really good friends? I looked him in the eye and said: great! Actually, empowering. Yea, I feel really powerful right now. He laughed and said "Nice! I like that" and headed back to the bar.
Soon after I fell asleep, but not for the whole night. At about 3am I woke up to one of those jerks standing over me trying to see if I was awake. I amost socked the crap out of him, but he was too far away and I wasstill confused/disoriented. I turned over and he went back to his friends. For the next
30-45 minutes they talked, laughed, screamed, wrestled, took pictures, slapped each others naked butts, got emotional; the whole nine yards. Finally they passed out. I was pissed but glad it was over. I figured they would sleep late and I would be gone before they woke up.
Wrong again. They woke up at 6:45 for their train and were just as loud as the night before. Here are some notes I wrote after they left:
Hostels are not my favorite
I'm grown. I do not need to revisit college with dorm style living. This is the knowledge The Yellow Hostel and three entitled SoCal boys were kind enough to share.
Comments that really pissed me off:
(D3 was already out of the room)
D1- we were really obnoxious when we came in last night?
D2- were we?
D1- at least I was.
D2-yeah, but no one was here.
** we were there you jerks!!**
D1- I didn't really care if they were here. I still don't.
***beeeeeeeeep! (internal cuss storm)
I was turning purple from holding in the tongue thrashing they had coming their way, which would only keep them here longer and give them something to laugh about on the train later.
Even as I typed my notes i was angry. Oliver, who was the final person in the room, was angry as well. I turned to him and said: those guys were jerks!
Oliver: yes! And I still jar and 1 1/2 hours before I have to wake up. They made me take pictures with them last night too!
We vented and soon he went back to sleep. I went to the train station to book my train tickets out of here! I reserved a train from Firenze to Milan, to pick up my passport, and an overnight train from Milan to Barcelona. I didn't have to reserve the train out of Rome (to Siena and on to Firenze) so my schedule was set! One more day in Rome, followed by a day working my way up The Boot, grab my passport, then on to Spain and the last week of my trip!!!
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