When in Rome

I am so excited to tell you all about my travels this past week! This will be very detailed because I wrote down what we did every couple days so I didn't forget! It was so much fun! Pretty much the best time of my life ever!!!

To start off, on Wednesday, I went to one class and skipped the rest...no big deal! We left Caceres at 12pm on a bus to Madrid. On the bus ride, they played the movie Wooly Boys-an American movie dubbed over in Spanish about some sheep herders I think. We met a girl from New Orleans who was working for the government in Caceres for a year and was traveling to London for the next week. Once we got to Madrid, we went to our favorite hang out-Doner Kebab, which we renamed Loner Kebab because Lizzy will be all alone on her last trip to Madrid and will have to go by herself! We rode the metro to the airport and this super cute little Spanish boy kept staring at us. Then, he became shy and a hot German guy told us that "he didn't like us anymore."

When we got to the airport, a lady with bright yellow hair and a bright yellow suitcase had us show her how to get to Terminal 1 (the same place we were going). We went through security and sat around waiting for our flight to leave. It was delayed 1 hour so we did not leave Spain until 10:15pm! On the plane, we met girls from the US who were studying in Salamanca and were going to Rome as well. We arrived in Rome around midnight and were shocked to find out that there were no customs to go through. I guess that since we stayed inside the European Union, we did not have to go through customs. The sad part is that we were unable to get our passports stamped :( We found a very nice cab driver to take us to our hostel. He asked us what we thought about Obama and told us the best restaurants and gelaterias to go to in Rome. We were able to communicate pretty well with the people in Rome because many of them spoke English. If they only spoke Italian, we spoke in Spanish since the two languages are pretty close. Our hostel man met us at the door and the 3 of us with our very full backpacks plus the hostel man (who was by no means small) crammed into a tiny elevator and rode up 4 floors to the hostel. He showed us our room and we went right to sleep.

On Thursday, we woke up early-6:30 am because we had tickets to enter the Vatican Museums at 8am and did not want to be late. Our hostel owner showed us how to get to the museums. We got our tickets online, which I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone planning to go to the Vatican because we did not have to wait in the long line. Also, the museums are not open to people without advanced tickets until 9am, so there was like no one there for the first hour while we were walking around, which was nice. We stopped at a coffee shop inside the museum and got Italian coffees with little hearts from the lady adding the milk. I still cannot drink coffee but was so desperate for caffine that I did.

Next, we went to the Sistine Chapel. It was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!! The walls are filled with paintings by Michaelangelo and it is so gorgeous!!! It was my favorite thing that I saw in Rome. The paintings depict Jesus's life and Moses's life. There is also the famous Creation painting with two fingers touching, which is actually part of a larger painting of two people, which I did not realize before seeing it in person. It was SO cool! I could have stayed there all day! Another note, I would recommend getting the audio guides for 5 or 7 euro because they went through each painting and pointed out things that I did not notice at first glance.

We went to the gift shop and got some postcards which we wrote in a little garden outside of the museums. It is a big deal to send postcards from Vatican City because it is its own country and has special stamps. While sitting outside, Casey noticed that the guy at the table next to us was wearing a hat that said Nebraska and Lizzy was very excited since she is from Omaha so she talked to him and took a picture with him.

After leaving the museums, we went to get our first pizza and gelato! I got chocolate and Mister Nico, which were both delicious of course. As we were walking back to our hostel, we passed 4 college students and Casey noticed that one was wearing a get your Sig Ep heart on shirt which could only mean one thing...they were from Iowa State!!! It was Casey's dream to run in to someone that we randomly knew in Europe, so here was our chance! We ran after them and found out that they were from Iowa State and were studying in Wales. We talked about people we both knew and told them where we got our gelato and were back on our way to our hostel. How crazy that we would find other ISU students like that!

Back at our hostel, we took a nap since we had not slept very much the night before. We met other girls in our hostel who were from Canada and they told us that we were in luck because it was culture week in Rome and lots of museums, including the Colliseum, had free admission. Later that afternoon, we metroed to the Trevi Fountain. On the metro, we met a couple from North Carolina. The guy was stationed in Italy for the Marines (we think) and they were nice to talk to. On our walk to the fountain, we passed by White Restaurant which serves pizza and gelato. We went in and the Italian guy serving the gelato tried to give Lizzy a sample and ended up putting it on her nose.

By the time we got to the Trevi Fountain, it was dark and it was all lit up. I never realized that it is actually attached to a building and is not free standing. We took pictures and a super nice guy came up and talked to us. He was from southern California and was on a trip to Rome with his sister and dad. His sister got tired of waiting for him to finish talking to us so she pretended he was her husband to try to embarrass him and get him to leave. It was pretty funny.

We went back to the White Restaurant and got a pizza to split. It was good. As we were leaving, a waiter was staring at us and dropped a whole tray of glasses. We just walked away and laughed. We decided to go out for a drink and followed my guidebook to Trinity College Bar-an Irish pub. It was pretty much an American hang out but that was okay with us! I got a Magner's which was good. The bartender, who was wearing a sweatervest kept staring at us and started playing music we listened to in middle school. We could not believe some of the songs he played. There were also some creepers there but we ignored them for the most part. One guy was just sitting in the corner dancing to himself...strange. Anyways, there was a super cute American guy who did a trick with a euro bill and some euro coins and he taught me how to do it too.

Around midnight, we left the bar and it was raining. We started down the street and ran into the guy who taught me the money trick, which was slightly awkward so we turned around and crossed the street. We were just about past the guy and his group on the other side of the street when Lizzy slipped on the wet cobblestone and grabbed Casey to hold herself up. We are pretty sure the guy and his friends saw and were all dying laughing as we got to the next building where no one could see us. We were laughing so hard. We took a cab to our hostel and went to bed after a very successful day...2nd best day of my life!