Be prepared for a super long post... because this one is going to be huge!
So to start off the month of traveling (abroad from London)... I went to Italy. Rome to be exact. So here's my post:
Wednesday March 2nd- Sunday March 7th.
Wednesday.... Oh Wednesday. I got up super early to catch our bus to the airport to catch the flight. I got up around 2 am.... and triple checked to make sure I had everything---clothes, toiletries, my letter to enter the UK, my passport, plane tickets, bus tickets etc. I put on the role of the Mom-- asking if everyone had their passports, letters and tickets. I always worry about those kinds of things. So, finally every one made it downstairs in the entry way and we took off from Palace court to one of the bus stops near our flat. The bus would take us to the victoria station, where we'd catch the coach that would take us to the London, Stanstead airport (London has 3 airports). We caught the bus just fine and got to victoria station... where we ran into our first hiccup. It took us quite awhile to actually find the pick up spot, but one of the girls, Emily forgot her tickets... plane tickets and the bus ticket. So she was stressing and ran to go purchase another ticket for her to get on the coach that was leaving very shortly. We made it though, onto the coach. All of us. So that was wonderful. The coach ride was about an hour and a half long. Once we got to the airport we made our way over to Ryan air to get our passports checked so we could go through security. This is where we ran into problem number 2 and 3. With ryanair if you don't have your ticket printed out they charge you I think 50 dollars to print it off. So, Emily had to pay, again, to print off that ticket. Then we found out that Blake, had accidently scheduled his flight for the day before and just got the days mixed up. So he had missed his flight and couldn't go with us. He had to buy a whole other ticket. I'm not going to let you know how much it was... because it was ridiculous. Think into the 500 dollar mark. And throughout all of this the ryanair staff were very angry and unhelpful. They had terrible customer service. Anyway, while all of this was going on Jaynann, Katie and I were getting pretty antsy worrying that we were going to miss the flight. So we took off through security. I got through just fine... they hassled Jaynann and Katie a bit with the liquids, but we all made it through. Once we were through we found out that it was a 20 minute walk to the gates... so we walked very fast to our gate and got there with time to spare. But, the time kept on going past and the rest of the group hadn't come yet. Finally when we were just about to board the flight we see them running to the line. Kaylee, dropped her bags and just started crying. They had a terrible time through security. Kaylee and Sharon had to throw away everything--all of their liquids, their expensive make up. Everything. And they were afraid they weren't going to make it. By some miracle all of us (except Blake) made it onto the plane even with all the baggage restrictions (ryanair is sticklers about that). The plane was pretty ghetto and the flight attendants were pretty ornery. They had this silly synchronized routine for the safety stuff that was pretty humorous and they got made at me and Katie for talking. Pretty funny. Anyway, the flight was pretty long. I fell asleep for most of it and woke up just as we were passing over the alps and the sun was rising. It was breathtaking. I wish I would have got a picture of that moment. It was very beautiful. Throughout the whole flight there were constant announcements of things the flight was selling--- smoke free cigarettes, lottery tickets etc. Random? Yes. Then when we landed a trumpet fanfare came on with this Irish guy coming on the intercom saying "this flight landed on time... congrats." or something like that. It was pretty funny and random. Haha. We got off the plane and it was.... RAINING. Yeah. We left London to miss the rain, and found it in Rome. We got through the passport check just fine and found our taxi driver. What they say about Italian taxi drivers is ALL true. They are CRAZY! haha. We were going down this little, very narrow alleyway and we were probably going about 80. It was very different. We got to our little hotel and left our bags inside, since it was still pretty early we couldn't check in yet. Turns out our hotel was in an AMAZING location. We were about a 5 minute walk from the Colosseum. In fact when we stood on our road (serpentine something) we saw the Colosseum at the very end. It was awesome. Plus we had about 5 gelato stores within walking distance... one even just across the street. We also had a great pizza place that we went to at least once every day we were there. Super good. And that was our first stop. I got pizza with potatoes and rosemary on it. I didn't even know that was a thing. But, it was delicious. Seriously. And I got a diet coke. The diet coke in Italy was probably my very favorite in all the countries I went to.
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| My first Pizza in Italy. So good! |
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| Yum!!! And I love that they call it Coca Cola light instead of Diet Coke |
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My 1 pound Italian Phrase book I got in London. It came in handy, that's for sure!
After we got food we started roaming around Rome. We just headed in whatever direction looked the most promising. We got a map later and it turns out when we did that we saw about 8 of the 10 most important things to see in Rome. Pretty cool. |
Our first thing we ran into was this monument. I still don't know what it's called. But it was gorgeous:
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| The view from the steps of the monument. |
Then we started walking some more and came upon some ruins. So it turns out, Rome is full of ruins. And not ones that are famous (although it has a lot of those too). These ruins are just random. You could be walking down the street and then all of a sudden this section is blocked off and full of ancient ruins. It was so cool. In all of the ruins we saw cats. Tons of cats. They were everywhere. It was pretty hilarious. Especially when we found that many of the souvenir shops had postcards full of cats with the famous monuments. Totally random right? Also Rome was full of vespa scooters. So I took a picture of a whole row of them, too:
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| Cats... cats everywhere!! |
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| Random Ruins... with the cats |
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| Vespa Scooters |
Eventually we made our way to Castle D'angelo. This castle was beautiful and totally reminded me of angels and demons. In fact, just being in Rome reminded me of Angels and Demons. The castle was beautiful. There was a bridge that you crossed to get to it and the bridge was decorated with angel statues on either side. The statues were gorgeous:
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| Castle from a different angle. |
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| The Obelisk in the Vatican City |
After walking for a few hours we were exhausted, so we walked back toward our hotel and took a nap in our room, called the "Mario" room, until we were to meet up with the rest of the girls that were at a different hotel for dinner.
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| Taking a nap before dinner. We were all completely out. Yes, those are towels we are using as blankets. For some reason I was so tired and it sounded like a good idea to use it as a blanket... turns out everyone followed my idea. Haha. Too funny! |
We met up at the Colosseum and headed to a nearby restaurant where we pretty much had a sketchy meal (not the food, but the service). The workers were trying to swindle us 12 girls out of lots of money. After that meal we parted ways, got some gelato at the place across the street from our room... SOO GOOD! and then went into our room to hit the hay. Turns out wandering Italy and being up since 2 am is pretty tiring.
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| Some of us at dinner :) |
Oh and I forgot to say what happened to Blake. Turns out he found a flight for a few hours later, but had to pay a lot of money for it. So, he took it and spent most of his afternoon trying to find us. He had no idea where our hotel was, what we were doing. So, basically it's a miracle that he found us.... and Katie's obsession with checking facebook. He wrote all of us desperate messages to find us (none of us had phones). But, yeah he found our hotel and we chatted about his crazy adventure and then hit the hay. Poor Blake. Oh, and we stopped and got more Gelato and pizza for him. Yum.
You will see that most of my time in Italy was spent eating. So, I'll be mentioning the food quite a bit. It was really that good. :)
