Rome... A little late

So, I have taken my time putting up this post because I wanted to include photos but for some reason it won't let me so everyone is just going to have to deal with it. DAY 1: Thursday the 18th, we woke up at 7am to get all our stuff together and run to our bus that was waiting outside the Ferragamo store. We made it, I was quite sweaty though. Yuck. The bus ride was 4 hours and I tried to sleep but coach busses, no matter how luxurious they are suppose to be, are not that comfortable. We arrived around noon, checked into our hotel and got pizza for lucnch. We got these HUGE slices that they fold in half for you so you eat it like a sandwhich. Of course I dripped the oil from it all down my shirt so that was nice. At 2 our first tour began. We took the subway to the Spanish steps which are right in front of this street with all the expensive stores on it and it always seems to be crowded but it was a lot of fun. Then we walked to the pantheon which is essentially just a really really really really old church with a hole in the ceiling. Oh and Rapheal the painter, not the ninja turtle, is burried there. Outside of the Patheon there were these men dressed up like ancient roman worriers. One of my roomates was trying to get a picture taken with him and he said that she had to pay. But then as I was causally strolling past he said "for the sexy one, free" so I took a picture with them and of course felt very special for like 30 seconds. We then walked to the Trevi Fountain which was packed but beautiful. We threw coins over our right shoulder because thats what everyone does. What we gathered was that if you throw one coin you will return to rome at some point in your life and if you throw two you'll fall in love, or something cheesy like that. Then we got gelato yum! The rest of the tour that afternoon was a long precession of churches that all blended together and none that were too exciting of famous so I've blocked all details of that out of my head. BORING.
That night we met up with Allie and Allison who are studying there and we went on this organized bar crawl. We all met by the Colossuem (pretty cool at night) and had a sort of happy hour where there were "free drinks" (we paid 15 euros to join) we got a t-shirt and we played some games that were entertaining to watch. Emily, Marrissa, and Michelle all played one game where they were partnered up and had to push a beer can, while blindfolded, up the leg of thier partners jeans, and down the other, then open the beer and try to get their partner to drink the whole thing without spilling as fast as they can. The one girl in the competition that wasn't one of my friends won. Then we went to three other bars, danced, drank, and had fun!

DAY TWO: 7am wake up...again. There was a bus strike so we had to be at the subway at precisely 7:45am because the strike began at 12 and we had to make it to the Vatican!! When we met our tour guide, Fredarica (who was acutally really cool except for this little incident) she took attendence like 5 times. No joke. We were all ready to murder her and wander around the massive building by ourselves. But she eventually got her shit together, got us "Whisperers" aka headphones and we were off! We saw a bunch of broken statues in the first couple rooms that did not impress me. Then we saw some of the old popes living quaters and all the paintings done by raphael like the School of Athens which is that painting with people walking/sitting/chilling on some sort of steps. I'm sure if you saw it you would know what it was. Then we went into the sistine chapel in which you are not allowed to take pictures but I snuck a few. After taking like 15 I got caught on the last one and one of the guards yelled at me. Its okay though cause I had no idea what he was saying. Next stop was St. Peters which is BEAUTIFUL. It is also enourmous, the largest church in the world! Everything in it is overly decoratated with gold and mosaics and all sorts of things. Our tour guide pointed out that everything that looks like a painting is not a painting at all but a mosaic and thats why its okay to have lights on all the time because it can't fade. Looking at the pictures then was incredible because these things were so elaborate and huge. The last popes body is still on display there which was slightly distrubing. I got pictures of that as well which felt wrong but it was allowed and I was intruiged. His face was covered in wax though so he still looked like a human as opposed to a rotting piece of flesh. YUCK. We climbed to the top of the dome after which was more steps than the Duomo! There were gorgous views up there. I lost my friends though, thought they had walked down with out me. It turns out we were just circling on the top in search of eachother at the same time so we never ran into eachother. I then sprinted down the stairs thinking they would be waiting at the bottom but no such luck. I just chilled at the bottom and then approx 7 minutes later they came busting through the crowd yelling my name so I guess everyone was a bit paniced. The rest of the day we spent relaxing. We had a long, expenisve, lunch which was not good (Rome's food kind of sucks) and then we took a very much needed 4 hour nap. We had Mcdonalds for dinner and then we went to Campo di Fiori which was this really fun little square with lots of bars. We started the night in this bar called Drunken Ship and a bunch of us girls got these pitchers of long Island Ice Teas yum. Then we went to a couple other places and thats about it!

Day Three: We went to the Colesseum. Its really cool looking. I'm mad at one of the popes though from back in the day because he wanted to recycle the marble so theres no seats left cause they were all taken out! It probably would have still looked more like a stadium today if that hadn't happened. LAME! The rest of the day was spent looking at ancient roman ruins which were cool but very little was left so it was hard to picture what it was like. For lunch me and Emily got CHINESE!!! It was nice to have a little change. I ordered way to much though so for the rest of the day i felt like a fatty. Then we took another long nap and went to the same place as the night before.

Day Four: We signed up for an optional tour which was of these "villas" they were also ancient ruins and one of them was this fountain garden. There were some 30 fountains and it was amazing. So pretty. It was crazy to think that people in the 1500's were able to figure out how to get enough water pressure to shoot the water so high! For lunch we got kabobs which are just chicken wraps kind of but they were delicous. Then we went home!!

Oh and I forgot the mention that besides a few moments of rain, it was like 60's and Sunny... in Feburary. JEALOUS???