I'm dreading to find out how long this blog will end up taking me since it's been at least five days! I'll try to remember every detail possible!
Friday at 5:30 am my friend Mackenzie and I arrived at the Madrid airport. That should be plenty of time to get through security to make it to our 7:05 flight, right? Well, no! We got on the shuttle for our terminal but confusion lead us to ride around the loop twice. When we finally found where we needed to check in, the last call sign was already flashing. Then, for some reason everyone was flying out of Madrid at 7 am so the security line was packed. We cut :s Then came the mad dash through the airport. We arrived at check in just as boarding was supposed to start, but luckily the plane was late so no one had boarded by the time we found our gate. We were finally able to relax (for the most part, Europe doesn't give you free drinks on the plane) and sleep until we landed in Rome at 9:30 am.
When we arrived at the airport, the original plan was to take a train into town (since the airport is so far out of town) and then take the bus as close as we could to our hostel. We stopped to ask at an information desk which train we needed, but a lady told us about a shuttle that would take us directly to our hostel for only a few euros more than the train would cost. Since we were already stressed we decided to take the shuttle instead of trying to maneuver our way though public transit. It turned out to be a great decision because our hostel was a little difficult to find at first. The woman working the front desk at the hostel informed us that there was a public transit strike going on that day only, so it would be nearly impossible to see the Coliseum that day since we would only be able to travel on foot.
After freshening up from an entire night of traveling, we set off to find our first attraction. We decided to start with the Pantheon, an ancient church that is partially in ruins. It turned out to be a great place to start because it was free to enter the church and look at the murals and tombs. Right next to the Pantheon was a great restaurant where we had our first real Italian meal. I had lasagna and absolutely loved it! We kept walking to find the Trevi Fountain so we could toss in coins and make wishes. Before we could make it that far, we ran into the most beautiful building I would see the entire trip.
I still couldn't tell you what the building was called even though I tried to read it off of the map a million times, but there is some type of museum situated inside the building. It is an all white, marble building with beautiful Roman pillars and close to 100 stairs. There are statues everywhere you could possibly imagine with one giant sculpture on top. At the top of the stairs there are large flame torches. Everything about this area was beyond beautiful and it was my favorite site of the entire trip.
In the distance from this building, we could see something shaped very similar to the Coliseum, though we knew we wouldn't be running into that today. We figured we would walk down and see what the building actually was since we had three days to kill. The closer we got, the larger the ruins got, until it was obvious that we did the unthinkable. We walked the entire way to the Coliseum. We decided not to take a tour through the Coliseum since many people said it wasn't worth the money and since there was so much construction going on inside the ruins. Still, we had our magical Coliseum experience. Finally, we found our way to the Trevi Fountain and were able to make our wishes. At the end of the first day, we only had a few more sites in Rome that we needed to get to, and we still had two entire days to fill.
The next day we woke early (way too early) to catch our train to Florence. We had bought the tickets in advance and had asked what bus route to take to get to the train station. We got on our bus and rode a few blocks before the bus driver said that we had to get off; this was the end of the line. We were so confused because everyone said that the train station was the end of the line. We were stumped at what to do next, especially since there wasn't a metro stop anywhere near where we had been. The bus had dropped us right by the Vatican so we knew a metro had to be close, but our departure time was even closer! We ran again, but this time through the streets of Rome, trying to follow the signs for the metro and hoping we were headed in the right direction. Every chance we got, we would stop to ask a nun or a police officer if we were headed in the right direction. Finally, 15 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart, we arrived at the metro, threw money into the machine and ran to the train. Luckily, ours was pulling up as we arrived on the loading dock and our stop was only 3 or 4 away. We made another mad dash through the train station and our train was easy to find even though the station was huge. We arrived in our seats less than three minutes before we were scheduled to depart.
Florence was absolutely beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Bilbao but with more history. It was the perfect size to do it just a day. The Duoma was the most beautiful building I have ever seen. The detailing on the building was unimaginable. The inside had a painted dome ceiling that I liked better than the Sistine chapel paintings. It circled around from the pits of hell to the top of heaven. It was some of the best artwork I've ever seen. In the Duoma, we took the hike up (and later back down) all 463 stairs to see the view of Florence from above. You could see for miles! On the way down, we got to look at the ceiling mural up close. That may have been one of the highlights of my entire trip.
The rest of the day we spent exploring the city and shopping. There is a great street market in Florence where bargaining is expected. I loved it! At some point I was nearly convinced to buy a hundred dollar leather jacket. I talked myself out of that one though! I did buy a few gifts for family and clothes for myself since Italy is also in their sale season. Luckily it wasn't nearly as hard to find the train on the way back to Rome that night. We rode home first class which meant we got complimentary drinks and snacks. That is the only time you ever hear the word complimentary in Europe. Not even the water is free!
Sunday was free admission day at the Vatican Museum. I will never pass up anything free. The museum had an incredible about of art and kept me interested longer than most museums would. All I wanted to see was the pope mobile/maybe even take a picture with it. This dream, unfortunately, did not come true. But I did get to see the Sistine Chapel along with the Creation of David painting. No photos are allowed in the chapel and there is also no talking allowed to keep the building sacred. The guards did a great job of ruining the sacredity in my opinion. They would shout "No foto" every minute and shush the crowd. I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't say either of those in the Bible.... I had to get a picture though, and with modern technology, I was able to get one on my phone without getting caught. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. If you get caught they just tell you to stop and let you keep whatever pictures you have.
We spent a lot of the rest of the day resting since we had only been walking through the city and waking up ridiculously early each morning. Of course, we fit in our daily gelado stop, which I now live for. I tried as many flavors as possible: mint chip, nutella, pistachio, cinnamon, and my favorite tiramisu. Luckily there's a gelado shop just a few blocks down from my house in Bilbao!
We finished up our trip on Monday by seeing anything that we had missed. It turns out we only had one site left to see, the Spanish Steps. It's basically a large plaza in the middle of the haute couture shopping district in Rome. It's a large flight of Spanish style stairs that lead to another one of Rome's many beautiful buildings. I absolutely despise the architecture of Spanish style stairs. They are long but short at the same time so you have to take lots of little steps rather than a normal step. This is one of the little things I miss about America.
It rained in Rome on Monday so we spent a lot of time inside our hostel preparing for our all night trip back to Bilbao. We decided again not to chance it with the buses and had a personal driver that works close with the hostel come pick us up. Again, it was only a few euros more to be guaranteed a safe delivery to the airport. Once again, traveling didn't go as planned. The driver was 15 minutes late to pick us up. Luckily (I think), he was able to get us to the airport fast.
*Side Note- All the cars here are stick shift and hatchbacks. No one has the ability to drive smoothly. Shout out to my bestie Michaela Neth! I will never complain about riding in your stick shift car again if I ever did in the first place! Anyway, there are very few driving rules in Europe. Lines are less of a guideline and more of a joke. Motorcycles and vespas make their own lanes and drive wherever they would like.
So we are in the car with our driver and he starts weaving through traffic like he's being chased. Then to further avoid traffic, the madman starts driving on the trolley tracks! He stayed on them for a good two or three minutes before deciding to go back to his part of the road. I just thank God that we made it alive and on time.
We flew out of Rome around 9:50 and were back in Madrid by 11:30. We then had to wait until 2:15 am for our bus back to Bilbao (which of course was late). Apparently we booked a ride on the luxury bus because we were waited on by a man in a suit who brought little mints and blankets. We had our own individual chairs with mini tv/tablets on the back. They had internet but it was slow. I slept a few hours on the bus but then woke up to be served breakfast. It was only two mini donuts and hot chocolate but it was the most luxury breakfast I've ever had on a bus! By the time I was finished we were only a half hour away from Bilbao so I decided to just stay awake.
It turns out that I don't know where I live in relation to the bus station. Since my host dad drove me I never had to learn. I got directions and was going to figure out the walk on my own but it was 6:45, I had class at 9, and I was exhausted. I decided to test out the metro for the first time and cut the trip by 20 minutes. The metro in Bilbao is so simple and it's the cleanest I've ever seen, especially compared to Rome.
Rome was by far the dirtiest city I've ever been in. Everything about it was dirty. Probably because of all the tourists. But the tourists weren't the ones leaving their dog's poop everywhere. **Gross Fact** On a 4 block stretch of sidewalk I counted 40 individual instances of dog poop. **Disgusting**
Anyway, this took more than an hour and I have no desire to add any pictures since I'm running on less than four hours of sleep. I'll set up a link to my Facebook photo album or add pictures later when I'm bored.
Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152531231135651.954111.562120650&type=1
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