We had a bit of free time so we walked around a little bit, but mostly stood in the shade and tried not to think about how hot it was. Rome was by far the hottest city we went to, although Florence gave it a run for its money.
We filled up our water bottles with the cold water from the Roman fountains (although we found out later that this was probably not a good idea - although I must say it tasted quite good, it was cold, and no one got sick - so whatever). Quinn hassled some of the people trying to sell knock off handbags which was quite amusing to watch. We also got some gelato (I think I had pistachio and chocolate which was amazingly good). After all that, we started our optional Guided Imperial Tour of Rome.
We started at the Colosseum and walked all the way around, with our tour guide stopping at certain places to explain things. I was feeling really sick (and it looked like everyone else was too) because of the extreme heat and from being slightly hungover and not having any breakfast so I only was paying attention to about half of her Colosseum spiel (even though she kept yelling at us for being half-dead, which we were). She was a bit crazy and actually told two guys off at some point because they weren't part of our group. I got a couple sort-of good pictures of the inside of the Colosseum, but I really wished we could have gone through the thing (some people did it the following day, but I spent the whole day at Vatican City). By the time we moved on to the ruins I felt much better, so that was good.
The ruins were really interesting. Some of them dated back thousands of years. It was also cool to see how they just built on top of older things and how when they excavated they could tell how old something was by looking at its level relative to the other ruins.
When the guided tour was over, Jase led us around to the other parts of the city (as discreetly as possible). We started at the Vittorio Emmanuel monument.
It was a massive building. If you climb up the stairs you can see all over the city. Of course, we didn't have time to actually do this. Oh well. Next time.
After that, we walked up the street a while to the Pantheon. It was a really amazing place. Much more interesting than I was anticipating (but smaller than I thought).
This is the outside of the building. Inside, it was very dark because there is just one opening, a hole in the middle of the domed ceiling (called an occulus). It provides all the light for the entire building and even lets the rain in whenever it rains (there's an old drain in the floor to let it out). Sadly, about half of the building was blocked off with scaffolding inside. But it was still very impressive.
After the Pantheon we headed to the Trevi Fountain. While the Pantheon was smaller than I expected, the Trevi Fountain was much bigger. It was huge! It took up like an entire block. It was also really crowded and we had to battle to the front to get pictures by ourselves.
I threw in three coins. According to Jase, you throw in one for good luck, one so that you'll return to Rome, and one so that you'll fall in love. :)
After chilling at the fountain for a while, we set off to get dinner. After some deliberation, we found a restaurant down some random street that was not too expensive but still nice. It turns out that the name of the restaurant the other people in the group picked was my last name! How random is that? I guess it's a fairly normal Italian last name, but it still seems like a weird coincidence.
Anyway, we had really good food there; we shared some pizza and pasta. It was all very yummy and enjoyable even though they charged us for the bread and the cokes were 5 euro (good thing I didn't get one). When we finished dinner we headed to the Spanish Steps to meet up with the group to go back to camp.
The steps were pretty cool, and not too crowded which was nice (apparently sometimes it gets so bad that you can't even see the actual steps). But I was able to strike a pose reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday so that was cool as well.
We all chilled there for a little while and then hopped on the metro to the campsite. Jase almost got us all lost, but somehow we all got back to the campsite in one piece. See, we had to not only take the right metro, but then get off and switch to a train that only ran like once an hour or something. If we missed the train, we also missed the bus from the train station to the campsite and therefore would have to get a taxi and would most likely miss dinner. But luckily I think we all made it.
The campsite in Rome pretty much sucked. There were a few good things about it, but the bad things just might outweigh those. I'm not sure. To start with the bad, the rooms were small, poorly lit and our door jamb was totally broken and barely locked. It would've been really easy for anyone to have broken the door and taken all of my and Vanessa's stuff. Also, not only were the toilets and showers up a hill from where our cabins were, but they were really gross, especially the showers. They had bugs in them and smelled really nasty. The good things about the campsite was that they had a really nice pool (which we used the next day) and a good store that sold cheap alcohol. Also, the bar served really good pasta at midnight (for free!). Because it was so hot, we sat outside on the picnic benches and drank and talked and played card games at night. The first night, I introduced King's cup to the Aussies and they seemed to really like it. Everyone had a good time, and of course, stayed up much later than anticipated. Oh well.
All in all, it was a really long tiring day after another long tiring day. And the next day would be just the same. But they were all good days. :)
next day...
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