When in Rome...: San Gemini to Rome

Oh my goodness… Where to begin? I woke up, and managed to get EVERYTHING done before the 9:05 train: Shower, finish packing, visually sweep the apartment for Cassie droppings, my last cappuccino at Bar Centrale (SAD DAY!!!! I love my morning baristo…), breakfast, purchase eurorail tickets for our European extravaganza, etc etc. Amazing. Susan and I reminisced as we sat on the train leaving Terni – how much we were going to miss the gelato, the pizza, the culture, the people…


Roma Termini. plus luggage.

We got to Rome, commenting on the abundance of graffiti on the walls EVERYWHERE. When do they do it? How do they see what they are doing at night? How do they get perfect lines? How do they access those places anyway? What is “KIDS” and the other random word? Hm.

We made the trek to our hotel that I had booked less than 12 hours before – yay for last minute planning!!!! The hotel is awesome – the receptionist spoke really good English and pretty much gave me the lowdown on what to see in Rome and how to get around for the best price – and I didn’t even have to ask! Our room has a REAL shower in it, and there is a decently cheap bar(café) across the street that has DELICIOUS Panini!!!! We continued our walking to the Santa Maria Basilica, and I was shocked at the beauty of the place. How in the world is this church not mentioned in the standard Rome visits? And the fountain right outside? Man alive…

Fountain right across from Basilica de Santa Maria - those buildings in the background were apparently the sites of the old Diocletian bath houses.

More churches - ………………………. Was a little confusing at first – we couldn’t get in, but when we walked around, we realized that we were trying to get in the back of the church. Awkward. But for some reason, everything kept getting better and better. This church topped everything I have seen so far. The coffered ceilings BLEW my mind, and all the stones were legit – So many churches in Italy have painted wood that kinda looks like stone, but most everything in this church was solid.

Got my first floppy hat. WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

Santa Maria Maggiore cieling

Then we had gelato, of course – I had mango and raspberry/lemon. Mmmmm soooo good. More sightseeing, and a cheap store that had NOTHING. We went down into the depths of the subway and had our first Roman metro experience. The Subway is SOOOO deep – deeper than the ones in Chicago for sure. We then kinda got lost and ended up walking through the rich part of the city… I thought of Jock Harbour, and could see him sitting at one of the fancy restaurants outside of the designer stores. The Spanish steps – it is true. The guys are creepy invasive there. But the presence of horses and carriages made up for it. :-D

Fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps

Spanish Steps

Piazza del Popolo – HUUUUUUGE. So much going on there. And soooo hot – so we went up to a garden place ………. And enjoyed the view of the Piazza from above. A man with roses approached me, but thankfully I had been warned about these guys – they force roses upon you and then ask for money. Epic fail for that guy on me…. Then we traveled back to our area, and stopped at a little vendor that had GREAT clothes – lets just say I spend 30 euro on 2 dresses, 2 shirts and a belt. YES. And Susan got luggage… which is SOOOO cheap here! I am definitely thinking about jumping on this bandwagon.

Fav Pic of 2 churches facing Piazza del Popolo

Soooo tired of walking…. So we went home and got stuff for dinner. Ohhhhh dinner. The Italian waiter was quite awesome, and we had a carafe of house red wine (sooo flavorful and amazing), meat stuffed olives that were deep fried for an appetizer, some kind of meat and potatoes for dinner, and an amazing fruity creamy pie thing for dessert. Perfect evening. And then…. The unbelievable happened. I had been going over in my mind how crazy it would be if we saw someone we knew in Rome. Right outside our hotel, we ran into Nikki, a girl from our San Gemini program. We had a mini-reunion and discovered that we planned on going to the same area of Rome the next day. Let’s just say that we are meeting up in the morning and heading to the colisseum. SO STOKED. Perfect ending to a perfect day …. As they say…..

When in Rome….