Last Day in Roma

The last day in Rome, Hannah and Caroline once again had to go back to the Vatican so I went sightseeing with Adelaide and Lauren. First we went to the Spanish steps because I still hadn’t seen them yet, and walked down the Via Condotti (its where all the high end designers have stores and off of it are best shops in Rome) for a few blocks window shopping in all the designer stores, they were all pretty packed and I wasn’t in a mood to really shop so we didn’t spend much time there. Then we got a cab and went to the Castel del San Angelo. It was built by Hadrian in the early 100s-200s BC I think. It’s the place in Angels and Demons where the Illuminati dude keeps the Cardinals hostage, and where Langdon and Vittoria go at the end and find the van, and the bad guy. It had 3 levels that you could look out from that had spectacular views of all of Rome. The very top level had amazing views of St. Peter’s and the square with the blocks leading up to it. The castle is right by the Tiber River, which I believe is the most polluted river in Italy, it had an uncanny resemblance to chocolate milk…ewww. I took a bunch of panamoric pictures of the Rome skyline! After we made our way down from the castle we decided to go to St. Peter’s square, it was a random decision and we weren’t dressed to go inside, but I thought it would be cool just to go walk around and take pics in front of the church, plus all of us had been inside before. After that we wanted to go have lunch in Trastevere at the suggestion of our teachers the day before. In my Rome Fodor’s book it suggested this restaurant called Romolo, but we couldn’t find it and just settled for a cute little place in the square. We all got Caprese salads, and this iced tea that was more Arnold Palmer than iced tea, but was sooo tasty. While we were eating lunch Isabel and Camille strolled by coincidentally so they joined us for the remainder of our lunch. There were some drunk hippie/homeless men playing soccer in the Piazza and drinking 40’s that also provided entertainment. They had so qualms about kicking the soccer ball against any building, and I think broke a few windows and definitely socked a few tourists in the head…it got a little out of hand. The police soon showed up and they hippies had to show some papers and after that were a little more reserved. After lunch we went into the St. Maria en Trastevere Church that had beautiful gold mosaics, it reminded me of St. Mark’s in Venice, but on a smaller scale. It was gorgeous, we sat and enjoyed the church for a while and then headed to the Colosseum again, because Adelaide had never seen it before. When we got there we saw all these boys handing out flyers for the aforementioned “pub-crawl.” One of them turned out to be Isabel’s friend from high school Ben, so we met him and talked with him and his friends for a while. They told us they just hand out flyers to tourists all day advertising this “pub crawl,” and write their names on the flyer and get 5E for every person that comes. They live in an apartment for the summer and he said they make a ton of money and get to party every night with the people that come, it sounded cool but they said they get terribly bored all day and just start messing with tourists after a while, and invent games to keep themselves occupied. After the colosseum we headed North back to the Spanish Steps area to do some shopping. There was a store called Energie that had a bunch of bright colored sporty clothes and the BEST selection of bright colored tennis shoes that Carol and Hannah had been to the day before so the rest of us wanted to check it out. I wanted to buy like 9804 pairs of tennis shoes, but they were pretty pricey so I refrained. Then I went back to the hotel to get my bags and ran into Carol and Hannah eating a late lunch, they had just returned from the Vatican and had a horrible day. They are both Catholic so the Vatican was their 1st priority in Rome but it really turned out being all they saw in Rome with all the trouble it took getting to actually get inside. Today they got SO LOST getting to the Vatican they ended up in some slums outside of Rome, got on a train going the wrong way, were so hot and sweaty that by the time they got inside the museum they were so exhausted and tired they couldn’t enjoy it. They didn't even make it to St. Peter's. I felt so bad for them, it sounded truly awful. After lunch the rest of the girls wanted to catch a 5:15 train back to Rome, but Hannah wanted to do some more sightseeing so we headed toward the Trevi Fountain. On our way we meandered to the Spanish Steps and down Via Condotti again, we kind of got lost, and were hauling our bags but we enjoyed it. I finally found the yellow Wayfarers that I had been looking for, FOREVER so I bought those and it instantly upped my mood! The Trevi Fountain was a mad house, again but we bought some gelato and took in the scene. Hannah threw some more coins in for me bc it was so crowded to get down to the actual fountain. Then we tried to find the metro to get back to the train station but after about 30 minutes we couldn’t find it and our bags were getting realllyyy heavy so we hailed a cab and headed to Termini to get a train back to the boat. We caught the 5:41 train, and had to walk like ½ a mile to get to the platform. We slept most of the way back and got on the ship around 7:30, then we went and sat up on the 7th deck for a while and hung out with everyone before calling it a night. That night the ship sailed from Civatavecchia to Naples. We were planning on catching a hydrofoil ferry to Capri early the next morning, so we wanted some sleep before another longgg day. Rome was so amazing; I loved it even more than the last time I was there! I could move there in a heartbeat, I just wish I spoke Italian! Every meal that we had was better than the one before, our hotel was AWESOME, everything we saw was so pretty. I am really enjoying my architecture class because we spent a lot of time on Rome and I really appreciated everything I saw a little more because I knew the history of it and could tell my friends all about it too.