Today we got up at 4am to meet up with everyone to hail a cab and head to the airport for ROMA ROMA ROMA ROMA!!!!!
Due to the perfect storm of a series of unfortunate events, my cellphone was lost the moment we arrived at the Sevilla Airport. Que triste, yo se. This was a rather disheartening way to begin the trip to Rome. I realized it was slightly hopeless to think I'd ever get my phone back considering A) its locked and B) on airplane mode so I can't call it or use the "find my iPhone" app. I allowed myself to be bummed about it for an hour and then told myself that I could have lost my phone on any old boring day but at least I lost it on the day that I was going to fly to Rome and NOTHING can ruin my trip to Rome.
We arrived at the airport in Ciampino and bussed to our hotel. When we got to our hotel we rode a 100 year old elevator to the top floor and met the one and only: CLAUDIO. Oh my lord he is soooooo cute. He spoke English pretty well, he's not perfectly fluent but he did a good job. His accent was SO SO SO cute. We were all in love with him! He gave us tons of recommendations on different places to sight-see and eat in Rome.
Per his suggestion, we headed to a nearby restaurant called Re Basilico and had pizza. IT WAS HEAVENLY! The sauce had soooo much flavor with tons of Italian spices. NOMS DOT COMS.
After we had each finished our pizzas, the waitress came over and asked if we wanted dessert and we declined. Then she said the magical phrase: "If I bring you a dessert for free, would you eat it?". Being the classy college students that we are, we respectfully declined such a generous offer and put on our monocles and top hats and strolled out the door. LIES. We said "HELL YEA HELL YEA HELL YEA, FUCKING RIGHT ALRIGHT" to that free dessert (for those out of touch with modern music: that was a Drake reference)! And this girl brought us out 2 plates because there were so many of us. It was Italy's version of Churros con Chocolate only this was MEJOR. It was sugar covered fried dough with nutella drizzled all over it. And yes, mama likey. We inhaled it in 0.5 seconds and THEN put on our monocles and top hats and strolled out the door.
We began wandering the streets with our trusty tour guide: Sara. She was the tour guide because she had a book called 25 Best Things to do in Rome, which we used as our Bible to navigate the rodes, trolley, metro, find the famous landmarks etc.
We began walking through the GORGEOUS city of Rome and I couldn't help take pictures of everything. Then we turned a corner and could see that down the hill was a massive statue. We began heading that way.
When we got down the hill we turned another corner and CABOOM, there was the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, also called The Wedding Cake (it really does look like a wedding cake!). If you're as uninformed about things as me then you will be pleased to learn that a monument called Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a monument to commemorate all the fallen soldiers that were never found during a war. This monument was breathtaking to say the very very least. No lie, my jaw dropped.
It was so immense and pure white, you couldn't help but be in complete awe about it. We took tons of photos to document its beauty.
Then, we continued heading down that road in search of the Colosseum.... this ended up being the incorrect route PERO we encountered more pretty locations to take pictures of. We weren't trying to micromanage the trip, just enjoy it. Well when I say "we" I mean "we the girls", jefe Esteban continued to tell us "avancé" (which is French for "keep going" because Esteban thinks he's some classy betch when he speaks French).
Eventually, we turned a corner and AHHHHHHHH there sat the Colosseum in all its glory. It's 10 million times cooler in person than you think it is and I'm assuming you already think its the bees knees so I'm saying it's DE PUTA MADRE!
It was a ways down the road so we continued to look at all the other cool landmarks as we passed them. We saw a massive area of ancient roman ruins, little did we know this was The Forum. Clearly, we had to have photoshoots:
When we arrived at the Colosseum, I snapped this ballin gem of me and my favorite landmark in Roma.
Then, we decided to invest 25 euro in a 45 minute tour of the Colosseum followed by a 45 minute tour of the Forum. We figured, vale la pena since this was the main landmark in the city and we were interested to hear some awesome facts about it.
COMO SIEMPRE, I'm about to be the conductor of the knowledge train because my awesome travel buddies let me use their iphones to take notes so I could keep my beloved blog followers informed (I do it for the fans jajaj):
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- When the Colosseum was still completely in tact, people used to sneak in and chisel holes into the walls to steal the precious metals the architects had used to reinforce the structure (like rebar, but it wasn't steel) with these precious metals they could sell them to make money
- The stealing of the reinforcing metals obviously weakened the structure and caused it to partially crumble 7 centuries ago
- Currently, 20% of the Colosseum is all that remains
- Furthermore, the Colosseum was used as a quarry for material to make parts of the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica
- The only reason they didn't use ALL of the Colosseum material was because they wanted to keep the facade of the structure
- Back when the Colosseum was full functioning and used for battles, every slave and convict was mandated to be a gladiator
- If the slave/convict was still alive after 7 years, they could buy their freedom
- Gladiators made 20,000 euros per hour while fighting
- Olympic arena in Beijing was modeled after Colosseum
- Way back when, they estimated the Colosseum could hold 58,000 spectators
- Cute little story: A man once tricked the emperor's wife into buying fake jewels and so he was sentenced to death in the Colosseum. He was brought into the center of the arena and waited for his imminent death. Everyone expected a tiger to jump out and eat him. Finally, a chicken jumped out but because the man was so nervous he practically fainted at the sight of an animal. Then, the emporer held up a sign that said "this man is a big cheater and now he's been cheated by the emperor"... apparently the emperors had a sense of humor!
- FINALLY, the whole "Thumb up and thumb down" to say "live or die" for the gladiators is NOT a real thing. It was invented by Hollywood.
As far as my opinion of the structure goes, I LOVED IT!!!! And I am SO glad that we got the tour because it really helps bring everything to life. Here are some of my great pictures I took once inside the Colosseum:
After we had sufficiently documented our presence in this majestic and historic structure, we asked the tour guide if we could do the second portion of the tour (The Fourm portion) tomorrow. He said no problem, so we regrouped and decided we wanted to see the Spanish Steps. First, we had to walk back to our hostel and get our room keys because before we just dropped our bags off behind the front desk because our rooms weren't ready yet. Seeing as it was already 6pm, we figured we should head back.
We met the adorable Claudio again, and he took us to an annex of the hostel that was the newer building and told us that we get free breakfast every morning at the same restaurant that we had lunch at earlier, ReBasilico. This hostel was turning out to be a gold mine! We got to our rooms and they were perfect. Nothing special, but clean and large enough for 4 of us (Cara, Courtney, Esteban and I) to stay comfortably for 3 nights. We rested our weary legs for a minute because LORD HAVE MERCY it felt like we had been walking for days and days already. I'm sure wearing my sandals wasn't helping but fashion over function baby.
We decided that walking to the Spanish Steps from our hotel which was located in Termini would not be the wisest decision for my sore little feetsies so we hopped on the metro and rode it straight to the steps!!! There, we met back up with Cassie and Rachel (they weren't staying at the same hostel as us). It was pretty awesome because there were sooooo many people sitting on the steps. I enjoyed the additional rest of sitting there and these Indian men were walking around selling tall boys for 2 euro so I indulged. HOLLA! Drankin some beezy on the Stepeezies de Espaneezy.
Also, this reminds me. No one, I repeat, NO ONE in our group spoke Italian. No one in our group even knew the rules of how to pronounce words in Italian, which made communicating in the city that much harder AND hilarious. In Italian "Espana" is spelt "Espagna" which honestly looks very much alike BUT I had turned off my spanish brain and was reading it "Es-pag-nah". Needless to say I was shocked that the "Espagna" stop on the metro took us to the Spanish Steps. Other fun words to say in Italian are "oggi" which means today and "Guigno" which is the month June, but if you are us you pronounce it "Goog-ee-goo-no". After we realized how much we were butchering the language we were laughing so hard we nearly cried... well Cara actually did cry, but that's standard. It also is hard to say words in Italian with a straight face because they all sound so funny since so many words end in the "E" sound and because of the intonation of the words. No matter what the words were, it effectively felt like we were saying "Veni Vidi Vici!"
Anywho, back to the Steps. We were all pretty starving for dinner and didn't feel like walking far to find food so we went to a nearby restaurant where I ordered Ham and Cheese Tortellini in a white cream sauce with a glass of red wine. Like all the food I ate in Italy, it was lovely.
After dinner, we went in search of gelato. We stopped in at a shop that appeared to be legit, PERO, they sort of screwed us over... and when I say screwed us over I mean Sara. She was the first to order a flavor and she asked for it in a cone. Well they served her a MONDO portion of gelato and then proceeded to decorate it in the most lavish way by sticking all these different cookies into the top of the ice cream. It looked incredible and she was really excited.... until she went to pay for it and they asked for 16 euros. Those little bastards. I can't believe that happened to her. I quickly told them that I did NOT want what she had ordered and that I only wanted 1 single scoop of coffee flavored gelato in a small cup. She was pretty bummed about being tricked into the most expensive gelato on the damn planet, but in hind sight, if she HAD to pay 16 euros for a dessert, at least it was delicious gelato from Italy.
Seeing as we had been up for 20 straight hours and had walked to Timbuktu and back, we hopped on the metro again and were asleep by midnight.
Lucky me, I convinced Esteban to give me a foot massage when we got home in exchange for me buying him a beer. Ohh sweet heavens that was totes VALE LA PENA!
Day 1: Great Success
Tomorrow we go to the Vatican!!!!
Ciao bella,
Raquel
Wow!! Great food, great architecture, great friends!! Love all the statues, fountains, tombs and especially the colosseum. It looks huge for just 58,000 spectators. That's a lot less than the Swamp, yet it looks bigger. Too bad the structure was pillaged over the years and suffered collapse. You are taking awesome pics! Your blog will be a permanent reminder of a truly awesome experience.
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