All Roads Lead to Roma!

Inside St Peter's Basillica (Vatican)
Hil feeling some divine warmth!

Beautiful, eh?

Hil with the Vatican Behind her

Just thought I would see if anyone was home!

Hil and our friends chatting amongst the crowds.

Wishing to come back!

The mighty Coliseum

I was trying to fix it for them!

After a wonderful four days in Switzerland, it was on to our next destination, Roma. We befriended a group of fellow Americans in our Barcelona hostel who are studying here, so we decided to come visit them!

With our Eurail passes we left Bern for Rome via train. Our route was long but interesting and a great way to see the countryside. It was dumping the most beautiful snow in Bern and raining most of the way through Italy, but the views out of the train windows were gorgeous nonetheless. We went from Bern to Brig to Milan to Florence to Pisa, where we took a quick break to eat and see the leaning tower, and then from there we went to Rome. All said and done we were on a train for about 12 hours.

Our friend picked us up from Termini, we arrived around 11:00pm, and we went back to her house and called it a night, exhausted from the travel. In spite of our best intentions to wake up early and get an early start on sightseeing, we were just too tired and let ourselves sleep in and recover from our long travel day.

After our late start, we were on a bus and off to the Coliseum. Overwhelmed by my excitment it really struck me how fortunate and lucky I am to have been able to come to the seed of western civilization, the heart of one of the largest and most advanced civilizations antiquity ever saw, twice. From there we did the routine walk through the forum up to the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Pantheon and a few more of the big sights.

That night we indulged in a traditional Italian restaraunt and both had quite possibly the best pasta dishes we have ever had. From dinner we went for a night on the town. Our hosts did a great job making sure we saw many of the fine bars Roma has to offer! (lucky us) A highlight for me, being the history fanatic I am, was when we were en route from one bar to another and came across a ruin nestled inbetween some buildings. I did not think much of it because everything is a ruin in Rome, but then one of my buddies turned to me and told me that "Julius Caesar was killed over there". The history this city has to offer blows my mind!

The next day was equally exciting, although not in the historical sense! We decided to dabble in some of the local culutre and go to an AC Roma Football game. Although the hang over from our night out made it a little difficult to get fired up in the beginning, the sounds and enthusiasm of the crowds quickly got us all out of our seats and into the game. Europeans are CRAZY sports fans!!!

This morning we experienced our first real travel difficulties. We planned on taking a 9:30am train to Ancona, Italy where we were catching our ferry to Greece. However, the train was sold out and the next train to Ancona would be to late to still make the ferry. So long story short, we are staying an extra day in Rome with our friends and we got to go and explore the Vatican today. So all in all it worked out just fine!

That is it from Roma! Our next destination are two small Greek Islands, Santorini and Ios, where we plan on laying on the beach and being bums until we leave for Egypt!

ciao ciao!