Roman Holiday

Trevi Fountain - Rome

The Spanish Steps - Rome

View of St. Peter's Square from top of St. Peter's Basilica - Rome

Colosseum - Rome

After a few hours of rest on the train back from Florence, Meg & Em managed to arrive at the train station in Rome. In Florence, we decided to get an early train back to Rome as we were anxious to see more of Italy. Meg & Em managed to somehow communicate to the ticket guy (who spoke no English by the way) that we wanted to catch an earlier train. After a few minutes back and forth of "scussi" and "grazie" and "huh?!?!?" we were on the train. Needless to say, Crunc was not informed of the change in plans. Em thought it would be a fun adventure to "just go" and see what it's like to "backpack through Europe". Meg, on the other hand, thought the two should be prepared in advance should anything happen or even worse, should we hit a communication barrier and can't find our way back. We went with Em's plan and landed at the train station in Rome with no address for Uncle Donnie's place and no clue on what the next step was. The fun adventure of "just going" quickly came to an end. Meg & Em scrambled (ok who are we kidding? Meg was the one freaking out) through the train station to find someone who could tell us where the Marist house was. De ja vous, after a few long minutes of "scussi" and "grazie" and "huh?!?", the tourism desk was able to obtain an address for us and we were on our way once again.

We took on the subway like we were naturals. During the ride, we were lucky enough to be sitting in the car where a man was playing the accordian. Don't worry - everyone on the train could hear him. The guy had a sound system right in his bag, we kid you not. After jamming out to a few songs, we arrived at our stopped and started the long walk up the mountain (ok, small hill) to the Fratelli Maristi house.

The next week in Rome was quite a blur. We spent every waking hour sightseeing, eating and drinking. When we weren't doing any of those, we were passed out trying to recover for the following day. Uncle Donnie took us to what felt like every place imaginable in Rome. We hit up the Roman Forum, the Catacombs, St. Peter's Basilica (where we climbed 500+ steps and where Meg managed to drop her camera allllll the way to the bottom). We toured the Pantheon and walked through just about every piazza there was in Italy. This still doesn't describe a tenth of what we saw. We walked it, we bussed it, we subwayed it - we got around Rome by virtually every means possible. We were turned away from the Scavi by the Swiss Guards because of our inappropriate clothing. By inappropriate we mean shorts past our knees and t-shirts. Yes, the guidelines are that strict in the Eternal City. But the camera dropping and the shunning didn't discourage us. We shopped til we dropped. We ate til we were in near comas. We drank til we couldn't find anyting else to drink. Before we knew it, Crunc had us running through traffic like we were old pros. It was the most fun, hottest (90+ degrees with 60-70% humidity each day), most amazing and most memorable trip thus far.

Although sharing every single detail would be tiresome for you, we hope you enjoyed our highlights and our pictures!!