Our First Day in Italy

We arrived in Rome this morning just after 8am CEST (we are 8 hours ahead of you all in Colorado). Our flight was a little over 8 hours long. Somehow our seating arrangements got messed up but with some finagling Electra and I got to sit next to each other. Crazy story about this! We sat next to the same lady on both of our flights; our first flight to DC then also our final flight to Rome. She was a very sweet older lady who is traveling around Italy with her sister. She told us how she and her sister went to Greece last year and she knew we would love it! Overall the travel went very smoothly. Both of us slept a fair amount and we got our luggage on the other side!

On the plane to DC. You can see our plane buddy next to me.

When we arrived in Rome, after going through customs and getting our luggage (we didn't get a stamp on our passports for some reason), we found transportation to our hostel. We planned on taking the train but we found a taxi that was one euro more, that we didn't have to wait for and took us directly to our hostel. Driving in Rome is CRAZY! It seems like there are no real traffic law and the cars are so tiny! Also, pedestrians walk right out in front of traffic to cross the street (we've been having fun testing this out). When we arrived at our hostel we got just a tad lost. We had the wrong street number written down, so we had to try to communicate with some locals to figure out where it was. This wasn't so bad! Everyone so far is very nice. We are trying to use Italian whenever we can, but we are not very good at it. The words we have used the most are grazie (thank you), salute (cheers), and ciao (hi/bye). We hope to try some more phrases as the trip progresses, however most people so far speak great English.

Right away after leaving our luggage at the hostel (we couldn't check in til 3pm) we started adventuring. We decided to check out most of Ancient Rome today. With two maps in hand we left the hostel. Our first stop was to get some food. We went into a random little café and ordered a ham and cheese sandwhich to go (Rustico). We also ordered an iced coffee (café freddo) or what I thought was iced coffee. It was really just a shot of chilled espresso with lots of sugar in it. It was all very delicious though!

After the quick bite to eat we walked through the Piazza della Repubblica. In the center there was a beautiful fountain. We had to try to dodge through the cars to get up close to see it, that was fun!

Fountain at Piazza della Repubblica

Then from there we walked over to the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II. This is a huge white building. One of the only ones in the area. It’s known for being white and standing out among all the rest of the yellowish buildings around here.

Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II

Then we finally made our way to the Colosseum. It is so huge and amazing, the entire thing looks fake in all my pictures. I can’t believe we got to visit a monument that is almost 2000 years old!

Looking lovely and sweaty

Amazing! The bottom there used to be covered with a wooden floor.

We love it here :)

After the Colosseum we wandered around the Roman Forum before being drenched in sweat and having swollen feet. Let me tell you, it is VERY VERY HOT here! Eventually Electra and I gave up on how we looked because the sweat overruled. There are random little fountains coming up from the ground that you can easily fill your water bottle with everywhere, so that is quite convenient.

Roman Forum near the Colosseum

View of the Forum from inside the Colosseum.

On our way back to the hostel to check in we stopped at another little café. This time we just ordered water and another meat and cheese sandwich.

When we first got back to the hostel we had to check. We were a little worried about the place because the review online weren’t that great (none of the hostels in Rome had good reviews) and it wasn’t recommended by any of our friends. The place, however, is lovely. It’s very clean and so far everyone is super nice. I did have one minor problem with my luggage though. At some point the lock on my suitcase must have been smashed so it was really hard to set the code to unlock it. After working our engineering magic Electra and I were able to finally open it! We used a metal nail file to wear down the spot that was catching.

We’re now back at the hostel, all checked in and bathed. We’re looking forward to a little get-together the hostel has planned later this evening. They are giving us free wine and pizza! Hopefully we meet some awesome new people. Then we plan on wandering for the rest of the evening.

Tomorrow we plan to do some kind of bus tour and visit the Vatican. Hopefully I can post another long adventure story tomorrow J Love you all!