Rome and Capri – 9-18 thru 9-24

Hello my rabid readers, and welcome back to yet another installment of my never-ending blog series. I’ve been gone for a week, taking in the splendor of Rome and the beauty of Capri, so I’ve got megatons to write about. I’m thinking about splitting the blogs up into chunks or days, just so it isn’t 14 pages long.

Day One – Tuesday, September 18

We were instructed by our strangely energetic teacher to meet down at the train station at the ripe hour of 7:30 am, in order to catch our 8 am train to Roma Termini. I inhaled the spongy 2 inch breakfast they provided for us and drained my box of peach juice (wasn’t that bad actually) as fast as possible, mainly because I had the heaviest bag imaginable with me. I’m not completely sure why it was so heavy, or why mine above everyone elses was the hardest to carry, but it was and it wasn’t much fun. I had everything in a tennis bag because they told us that dragging a rolling bag would be horrible. Well, nobody told me that lugging a tennis bag around on your shoulder would be ten times worse. Oh well, I have a nice big scar thing on my shoulder now, which I’ve been telling the girls is from a brutal bar fight defending the honor of a helpless puppy.

Anyway, we made the train and two hours later arrived in what would become the greatest city I’ve been to in a long time, rivaling London in nearly every way. We were following Sharon, the over caffeinated teacher, through the train station and down to the metro station underground, a system nearly identical to the London Underground. Everyone was slightly taken aback when the doors to the metro opened and hundreds of people simultaneously pushed in and out. I jumped on, not really knowing where we were going, but knowing that we had to get on. Most of “my group” followed me and somehow everyone found their way on. Sharon said our stop was Bologna, about 3 stops from Termini, so the girls sat down if they could and us manly men watched the bags. They warned us about pickpockets and gypsies, but I never encountered one on the Metro.

We made it to Bologna with no trouble and sprinted to keep up with that hyper teacher, who thought it was absolutely necessary to get to this hotel in the shortest time possible. 5 minutes down the road and a vicious burning in my shoulder later, we arrived at the hotel. Funny thing is that our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we had to pile our bags in a “secure location” which turned out to be behind a bar in the lobby. We were all rather tired and worn out at that point, so we didn’t care too much. Sharon told us to meet up at the Colosseo stop in about 3 hours, to take a tour of the Colosseum and the Forum. Our mega group of people split up into a lot of smaller groups, to find food and do whatever until we had to get over there. My group got a bit chopped up too, but it wasn’t so bad. We had Chris, Mark, Matt, Haley, Christina, and Brandy, which was a nice mix of people. Chris likes to think that he’s the leader of everything, but I think that the Metro initiative surprised him a bit, so he kept asking me what we should do. I have no problem leading people around, I actually kinda like it. So we went and got some panini things from a shop around the corner from the hotel and then made the best decision of the trip. We figured we could get a jump on the planned tour and go to the Colosseum early. I knew I could get us through the Metro, and everyone agreed. So off we went.

On the Metro the air of excitement grew as the stops flew by, getting closer and closer to the stop we all wanted to see more than any other. It was quite possibly also due to the fact that we watched Gladiator 3 times before coming to Rome, so we all had wild dreams of Russell Crowe chopping people’s heads off and stuff. Anyway, we finally made it to the Colosseo stop, and we all nearly sprinted up the stairs. I was next to Haley and as we made our way through the lobby section, I looked at her and she looked at me and we both kinda squealed with excitement. We walked out into the open where the Colosseum grew before us, a majestic behemoth of ancient brilliance. Our collective jaws dropped and the air was sucked from our lungs. If ever there was a perfect time to pickpocket 6 Americans, it was then.

But nobody did and our composures returned, and we made our way across the busy Italian street to see this spectacle of Roman engineering and entertainment. The area was flooded with tourists, who kind of detracted from the wonder of the space, but we didn’t care. We were at the freakin Colosseum! Bars closed off the lower layer of arches, making it impossible to go in without paying first. Around the exterior, tons of merchants tried to get our money in various ways, with everything from mini Colosseums to shirts with SPQR on them. Some brilliant folk were dressed up in Roman garb and would take pictures with people, for the ripe price of 5 Euro, which me and Mark split so we could take a few pics of us battling to the death. Quite awesome. We didn’t pay to go inside at that point because we thought we’d be doing that later on with the tour, which we didn’t.

After taking countless pictures of us in front of things, such as Constantine’s Arch, Titus’s arch, and many many ruins in the Roman Forum, we headed back to the tour, which was just about to start. Some old dude with a crappy microphone was our “guide” but basically all he did was stand in one spot for around 10 minutes and tell us useless information about buildings we already know about. The Colosseum is an oval? Gasp! Constantine was an emperor? Double gasp! Basically he was reading out of a text book and it was mighty boring. I was super glad that we got to spend time there before the tour because if we hadn’t I’d be bummed out.

The “tour” took us all the way through the Forum, into the National building (which I still don’t know that name of), and ended up over at the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps. The Pantheon was my second favorite part of the day, right after the Colosseum. The Pantheon, the round one for those of you un-in-the-know, is supposed to be the perfect building, made of a complete sphere (proportionally) inside. When you enter into the exact point where the sphere hits the floor, directly in the center of the building, you get this ridiculously cool feeling of completeness and almost ascension, as if you’re flying up into the hole in the dome. It was quite awesome. The only lousy part was again the number of tourists.

After that we were free to do as we pleased, which is usually involves food. Groups split off as usual, with some going to the Hard Rock Café up in the expensive part of town, and some others going shopping. Our group was slightly exhausted and smelly, so we navigated back to the hotel to shower and nap. We met back up and somehow made it to a bar-thing near the Colosseum stop, which was expensive and not really that great. After eating and paying out a small fortune, we headed back to the hotel, where we said our goodnights and headed back to our respective rooms.

In the room, which I shared with Matt and Mark, we searched the TV for something to keep us entertained for the hour or so before we fell asleep. You have to understand that we haven’t watched TV of any sort for quite a long time now, so we were desperate. Italian news was pretty much impossible, as was Italian MTV. But when the Miss Italy competition came on, we figured we could stand the language barrier for a little bit, just for the sake of entertainment. Mark thoroughly enjoyed himself and I thought it was rather amusing. At one point, as I was lying on my bed, I reached behind me to grab my Sprite and my entire bed collapsed. Mark nearly wet himself, and from that night on I slept on the bed on the floor. Great.

Sorry it’s taking so long to do all these. I’ve got a few days off coming up, so I’ll try and write some more then.