a day at sea and a full day in Rome, ITALY!!!!

Monday: Day 14
Italy day!!

With a full day of sailing, we had a day off of exploring as well as a day off from classes! We were so excited, but we definitely had plenty to keep busy with all day and all night.  We went to bed thinking we would get a nice long sleep, but forgot the fact that we had a meeting that morning for SOS (students of service).  At 0920, Heather called me from the meeting… that started at 0900. oops! Ran up there quick fast to catch the tail end of the meeting, then headed back down with Heather to chill in my room.  We discovered that our TVs show the union, so instead of going up there for all the meetings, we just chilled in my room, ate our Barcelona snacks, and fell asleep. Multiple times. Overall very productive day, don’t you think??

Tuesday: Day 15
Arrival in ITALY!! Civitavecchia and Rome!

After getting up early to see the pilot hop on in Barcelona, we decided that we would be completely lazy in Italy and just sleep through it.  We had to wait to pick up our passports by sea because we would need them to get on planes and get into the hostels and hotels.  As soon as we all had our passports, we grabbed our bags and headed into Civitavecchia!   We saw about 10 minutes of that city before we found the train station to catch the first possible train to Rome.  As so I took my first ever train ride!!!! Was pretty cool.  Our windows were really dirty, so we could not get very many good pictures. Except Kyle.  He was like a little kid in a toy store.  He had both of the tiny windows down on either side of the train and was hopping from one window to the other taking pictures. About an hour later, we arrived in Rome!!! From there we walked to find our Hostel: the Rome City Hostel.  Successfully checked in and headed back out to find the metro to Colosseo.  The coolest part was that the metro dropped us off literally right outside the Colosseo!! We literally walked out and had to take a step back because it was so stunning.  We took half a million pictures before heading to find some lunch right near it.  Kyle, Heather and I split penne with meat sauce and a cheese pizza.  Both were very tasty especially the pasta! After lunch, the other three girls wanted to go inside the Colosseo, but since Heather was going to go inside the next day Kyle and I decided to just hang with her.  We ended up heading out just in time to find Daniel and Lacey walking our way!! Was so funny.  We had been trying to walkie talkie with each other with very little success, but finally we found each other!! And thus the 5 of us headed out to explore Rome.  We walked alllllllll around! We saw
*Anco di Costantino
*Foro Romano (the ruins)
*Vittoriale
*Pantheon (hahah oh the Pantheon.  How I miss Charleston.  Unfortunately it was closed. We wanted to go inside, but we were there on a Catholic holiday and thus everything was closed!)
*Piazza Navona
*Piazza Colonna
*Prime Minister’s office (which had armed men some carrying swords others carrying huge guns!! Not someone we wanted to mess with for sure!)
*the Parliament Building
*Fontana di Trevi (this is the famous fountain that everyone knows about.  Supposedly the legend says that if you toss coins from your right hand over your left shoulder, then the following wishes are possible: you throw 1 coin to return to Rome, 2 coins to find love, and 3 coins for a divorce. Yep. A divorce. Haha so we got a picture of the three of us girls throwing 1 coin each into the fountain. Was pretty awesome)
*Trinita Dei Monti (Spanish Steps)  On the steps Lacey had to get gelato and imitate Audrey Hepburn hahaha

and that is just a small list of all the things we managed to see!! We found a cute little restaurant near Trinita Dei Monti where we got an excellent pizza with buffalo mozzarella and Salami on it and heart shaped pasta stuffed with buffalo mozzarella with a basil red sauce that was absolutely DELICIOUS.  Heather, Kyle and I have become excellent meal sharers during this trip.  It is so fun to get a few dishes and pass them around! Daniel and I also tried the house red wine that was from a local vineyard and it was really really good! I had never tasted red wine that I actually liked so I was pretty excited!!

We walked around a bit more and found a gelato place for 2 euro.  It was sooooooo tasty!! I have fallen in love with Nutella gelato! It is an absolute weakness! Haha they also have really REALLY good chocolate gelatos too. It is like eating a candy bar it is so good. At that place we were able to get three flavors all in one cup!! I got the Nutella, Coaco (chocolate), and a carmello (carmel) one.  Gelatos in hand, we walked to the nearest metro.  We said goodbye to Lacey and Heather (shiffle shiffle) as they took the train back to Civitavecchia to catch their SAS trip the next day, and headed back to the hostel for the night.  We all crashed around 11:30 completely worn out but very excited for the rest of our journey. :)