when in Rome...

as usual, when i wait too long to write a blog, i have to write it as a list so i don't forget what i did. (if you haven't figured it out, you can click on the pics to enlarge them - I've got quite a few, even with my editing, so I've made all the thumbnails small.)
here goes -

May 15: my last day at IDA - woot. It was a little odd, b/c none of the execs were in the office, and no-one remembered it was my last day. I missed out on the usual farewell lunch, but that might work out in my favor. Since I'll be working in the London IDA office as of June 11, all of the execs have promised me dinner and drinks when they come to London on business, to make up for forgetting me. In the end, the head-honcho-manager, and a couple people from the dept. next door surprised me with a huge beautiful bouquet, a box of chocolates, and a card. And my friend Elina bought me a farewell lunch in the canteen. Thank god I didn't ride my bike that day. I never would have made it home with bouquet.

May 16: My solo adventure to Rome - I was pretty nervous about this trip, but I knew Rome would be very tourist friendly, and I armed myself with all the directions I would need to get from the airport to the hostel. It was a smooth trip from doorstep to doorstep - and I managed to pack light enough that I didn't even need to check baggage. When I arrived at the hostel, I noticed an advert for a pub crawl that the hostel did - I was feeling pretty anti-social, but figured that would be the best way to integrate myself into the group. The pubcrawl was 20 euros, and included a glass of champagne, a short guided tour, an open bar for an hour, and then "crawling" to a couple more bars. It was a little quiet at first, but once we started walking, people started talking. "Where are you from" was the standard pickup line. Almost everyone at the hostel was Aussie, Canadian, American or British - it made it easy to make friends, but difficult to experience any real Italian culture. I befriended 2 girls from MN and an aussie dude, we ended up hanging out quite a bit over the weekend. The pub crawl was a good way to start off, and I also discovered the best time to see Rome is at night. (The most impressive thing I saw that night was The Trevi Fountain.) All of the sites are lit up, and the streets are empty. I also discovered that unlike everywhere else in the world, Rome does not cater to late night drunkards that need pizza and potatoes. Fortunatly for me, I remained aware of the fact that I was in Rome to see Rome, not my hostel bed, so I was careful how much I drank. The same cannot be said for some of the others on the pub crawl.

May 17: The hostel I stayed at is a little weird. It really seems to promote drinking and sleeping around. All of the dorm rooms, and bathroom, and showers are unisex. The toilets and showers have locking doors, but no extra space, which made showering, and getting dressed in the still wet shower cubicle a challenge. They also have a bar which serves cheap drinks, fresh OJ, coffee, and breakfast/sandwiches which was convenient, but it also meant they didn't have a communal kitchen - not convenient.

Anyway, I slept in, then went downstairs to the restaurant, ran into a couple people from the pubcrawl and we decided to tour the city together. We went back to the Trevi Fountain to see it in the daylight (that's me in bottom on the photo - apparently if you toss a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, you'll return to Rome - I went ahead and tossed the coin, although I don't really care if I return), some random basilica (they're everywhere) and The Pantheon (built in 125 AD!). The most amazing thing about the ancient buildings in Rome is how big they are.

Next we went for lunch - I was unimpressed with my antipasta and ravioli, although the hazlenut gelato was good. Afterwards, Paul the Aussie dude and I split up from the MN girls. I wanted to go to the Colosseum, which they had already seen. On the way over, we got sidetracked by a cat sanctuary that was built among some ruins. There was a free tour, although it meant hanging around the sanctuary which smelled like a giant litter box, but we did it anyway. Apparently the ruins are where Julius Cesar was killed. They were excavated in the 1920s and cats started moving in. I imagine the excavation stirred up the rodents, providing lots of food, as well as shelter for the cats. Today there are around 300 cats living there, all sterilized and vaccinated. Some live in the part of the ruins that has been turned into a kennel/gift shop, and the rest hang out in tunnels that go under the street. The tourguide/catwomen was an American volunteer, that goes to Rome for a few weeks in the summer just to help out. She was very bitter towards the city of Rome and their lack of support. It was a little creepy to look down in the ruins and all of sudden start seeing cats everwhere. It reminded me a children's book that I remember repeatedly checking out from the library as a kid.

****more added to this blog after i sleep - assuming i can sleep. my lovely housemate has fallen asleep with metal music playing at high volumes - less than a week to go..........

ok, i'm back. it's finally a beautiful day in Dublin. I met a friend for lunch (after getting lost on the way), and then cycled over to the shopping center to find a big carry-on bag. I found a fairly cheap duffle/roller bag at TK Maxx - it cost more than the bags at the budget bag store, but I'm telling myself it's better quality, and it has wheels. I could totally be a bike messenger - I cycled all the way back to the house with the giant bag slung over my shoulders. ****

Anyway back to Rome -

So after the cat sanctuary, Paul and I finally made it to the Colosseum. It's pretty weird walking up to it. It's so huge and so familiar looking, and stuck right in the middle of modern day rome. It was getting late, so I didn't go inside, and we were tired after walking all day. (I think in most cases I like having someone to travel with, but when it's basically a stranger, it can be a little awkward. I was happy to sit on the grass outside the Colosseum and people-watch, but Paul was eager to get back - and I didn't care enough to argue.)

That night we tried take-away pizza and met up with the MN girls, some dudes they met and all went to an Irish pub where we played stupid drinking games. Ugh. Of course I befriended the British guy, did my best to ignore the drinking games, and we talked about London all night. After a couple pints, we walked home - detouring to the Colosseum to see it at night. I tried to use my handydandy self-timer feature to take a group photo, but drunk boys aren't very good at standing still.

May 18: The majority of this day was spent either waiting around to get into the Vatican, or in the Vatican. I woke up early, along with every other tourist in Rome, to try and get an early start. Of course I ran into Paul the Aussie, and Tom the Brit, at breakfast, so I ended up not leaving the hostel as early as I had intended. Paul hadn't seen the Vatican yet, but he was leaving that afternoon, so he decided to join me in the hope that he'd have time to at least make a quick run thru. We arrived around 9:30 - I'd say the line was already at least a 1/4 mile long and not moving. I found out later that the Vatican doesn't even open til 10. Paul decided that he didn't care that much about seeing it, gave me his unused 5 euro voucher for a tour (that still cost me 32 euros!) in the hopes that being in a tour would let me skip the line later, and we went for coffee and more gelato - pistachio this time. At noon, after saying bye to Paul, I met up with the "tour"... It was nice - the tour guide was an American art historian that had been living in Rome for 8 years and she had lots of knowledge and was easy to understand. Unfortunately, I didn't get to skip any lines and still had to wait for an hour, with a full bladder, to get in. I felt like I was at Disney World.

Once were in in, everything went smoothly. The Vatican Museum is huge, but the tourguide walked us thru and told us about the most important parts - we all had wireless headsets hooked up to her mic, which was nice because we could look around while she talked, instead of having to stand still while trying to lip-read amongst all the other tourguides and tourists.
Here's some pics from the museum:
There were sculptures everywhere - mainly of naked men.
I thought the painting was cool because it's in color and B&W.
The last pic is of The Gallery of Maps.
After The Gallery of Maps we went into The Sistine Chapel - no photos allowed. It was crammed full of people, everyone looking up, but still pretty cool. You don't realize how huge the paintings are until you're staring up at them. The "Last Judgement" was my favorite - I could have stared at it for a long time, and I was surprised at how small "The Creation of Adam" is, considering is probably the most well-known image from the Sistine Chapel.

After the Museum and the Sistine Chapel, we found out the real perk of paying for the tour. We got to use a back entrance into the Basilica of Saint Petrus (or St. Peter's Basilica). Another HUGE building - we got there just in time to see the beginning of 5:00 mass, although it was all in Italian so it didn't hold my interest. As we entered the building, the sun was shining in just right - The Holy Trinity maybe? or maybe not - regardless, even with all the people, it was beautiful.

The tour ended, leaving us free to hang out. We had the option of going up to the dome, or down to the crypts, but I was tired of waiting in lines, so I just wandered around the basillica some more, and then hung around in St. Peters Square (and got more gelato - mango). I'm glad I went to the Vatican, I'd been wanting to see it since I wrote a report about it in 7th grade, but it left me feeling a little down on mankind - To think that for as long as humans have been alive, we've been devoting our money, time, and lives to "higher beings" that may not even exist - it seems like there are better ways our efforts could be spent - and if there is a higher power, he/she/it would understand...

On my way back to the hostel I passed a big interesting building so I went in (I unknowingly has scheduled my trip for "Culture Week" so admission to all the sites was free!). I still don't know what the building was, but I got some great pics of the Roman skyline. My walk back to the hostel took forever - up until this point I had been following other people, so it was the first time I really had to look at a Roman map...slightly confusing. I made my way to the Circus Maximus (used for chariot racing among other things) where there was a metro (subway) stop, and after 6 it's free to ride - hooray, my feet were killing me.

May 19: I met up with the MN girls, and we took the metro to Piazza Barberini, where we saw Bernini's Fontana della Api (Fountain of the Bees), and the Crypt of the Cappuccini Monks. The monks moved their church in the 1600s, and had to take their dead with them, so until the 1800s, they decorated the walls of the church with the bones of their dead. There are several rooms decorated with bones and skeletons in monks robes. In the last room, a sign reads, "What you are now, we once were. What we are now, you shall someday be." Creepy.

After the crypt, I split from the girls and went to The Roman Forum and Palantine Hill - it was nice - it's a huge outdoor area, so it's not overrun by tourists. I considered waiting in line to go into the Colosseum, but decided I'd save it for another day - and spent a couple hours wandering around the ruins and sitting in the grass. The Forum was the central area where ancient Rome developed. Before it was excavated, it was used as a cow pasture. The image of cows wandering around among half buried columns and ancient temples is pretty funny.

That night the girls and I had talked about doing the "Spanish Steps pub crawl". Apparently they take up to 100 people, and you get free pizza. We met at the hostel, ate some pasta, one last serving of gelato (coffee flavored) and went to our rooms to take naps and freshen up. I passed out, and slept until my new roomies arrived - 3 guys from Michigan - recent grads of dental school on a post-graduation trip around Europe. The migrane I'd felt coming on seemed to have receded so I took a quick shower and went down to the bar. Fortunately the girls had decided they were to tired for the pub crawl, so we spent the evening at the hostel bar, drinking cheap Italian wine and chatting with other travelers.

May 20: 7 am bus to the airport - busted at security for the mini-bottle of wine I had in my backpack, but the guard was more excited about the "Do Not Fall In Love" SDS sticker that fell out of my bag as he searched it. I told him to keep the sticker and the wine. Back home to cold Dublin.