150 Flavors of Heaven

Friday, 3.14.2014:

We all woke up early in order to get ready and go to the Vatican. Although we gave ourselves plenty of time we ran into some issues with the subway system. We ended up taking the subway the wrong way then realizing we had to turn around. Everyone's tensions were a little high around now. Once we had everything all figured out and were out of the subway system at the right stop we made our way to the Vatican. We skipped the super long line and toured all around the building:

It was absolutely wonderful to see the Sistine Chapel. Learning more since the last time I saw it made it all the more wonderful. When we were finished we walked over to see the St Peter's Basilica. This was also an incredible site to see! I knew I could have spent the whole day just looking at how intricate and elegant everything was.

After this we decided to split up, so Angie, Shawn, Wendy, and Shannon went to the Colosseum while Amy, Erica and I went to find some food and gelato while also taking a look at the Pantheon. We punted on the food idea when we saw that all the prices near the touristy places were extremely expensive. We decided that we would just get a bigger cones of gelato to tide us over. We walked all the way to this great place that had over 150 flavors of gelato. It was incredibly overwhelming that it was almost a little hard to process all the flavors. Eventually I settled on Snickers, Baileys, and Irish coffee. I could not be more happier with the choices I made. After eating every last bite of our ice cream we ventured to find the metro stop to take us back to the hostel. This took FOREVER. All of our feet were killing us as we walked around in what felt like circles. Eventually Amy said we just had to walk through this plaza and the subway stop would be right there. We walk in and find that we are in a garden area of some kind. We were extremely confused and decided it was prolly best to leave. As we were existing I see a sign that says Ministero della Difesa. We were trespassing on the ministry of defense's property! We then hightailed it out of the area. We gave up on trying to find the original stop and just walked to the next closest one and took that all the way back to the hostel. We rested our feet, because boy did they need it. Then Amy and I grabbed some pizza from a store nearby. When ordering we thought we were just ordering two slices of pizza but it turns out we ordered a whole pizza. I am a little ashamed to say the two of us finished the pizza no problem. Once the pizza was gobbled up and Erica was in the lobby the three of us headed back out to meet a free walking tour at the Spanish steps. Finding our tour was pretty difficult since there was 1. No specific meeting place, and 2. The tour guide didn't have a bright colored umbrella to indicate he was a tour guide. We eventually did find him and got started on the tour. Here are some pictures and fun facts from the tour:

Fun fact: Two words to describe Roma: Water and Marble. Marble for buildings and water for fountains.

Fun fact: The church on top of the Spanish steps is in the French section of the city 

Fun fact: The obelisks are for guidance with the city 

Fun fact: There are 124 steps on the Spanish steps 

Fun fact: The Italians have two types of police. 

Fun fact: Starbucks does not exist in Italy.

Fun fact: Two Italian kings are buried in the Pantheon.

 Every time there was a ledge or a bench, Amy, Erica and I took advantage of it since our feet were killing us! I can't remember the last time my feet were in that much pain.  We had plans to meet the other girls at the Trevi Fountain when the tour ended but the tour was running extremely late. Our tour guide was very funny and on any other night we would have loved him but running late and the fact that our feet hurt so bad made us a little frustrated with the tour. When we spotted our friends at the fountain we split from the group even though the tour wasn't over. We took our stereotypical wishing pictures and then left to find some food.

We ended up going to this place recommended by the tour guide. He said the spaghetti was phenomenal so we thought it had to be good. The guy was right! The food was wonderful but the service was horrible! 10 stars for food but 2 stars for service. After dinner we made our way back to the hostel to get some sleep and to let our feet rest. Getting some sleep was a great call since I had to be up at 5:45 to make it to my Pompeii and Naples tour the next morning.