Roma

Well folks, my travels are up for the time being, I really don't have enough money to go anywhere else for a while, although I do hope to take one more big trip before I come back.  I'm trying to decide between England, somewhere in Eastern Europe or Greece.  However, for the time being I'm going to stick to day and weekend trips around Germany.

I tell you, though, being in another country makes me appreciate Germany so much more.  I understand the customs and social norms here, I speak the language, I understand how to get around.  It's exhausting to be in another country where you speak not a single word of the language, don't know how their public transportation works, don't understand social norms, etc.

But, nonetheless, Deidre and I had a great trip.  We left Bamberg Wednesday afternoon, took a train to Nürnberg, then took the Metro to the airport.  Our flight left at 5:30, and we got into Rome at 7:30ish.  We then took a train one hour into the city, a metro and a bus one hour to our hostel.  The hostel was interesting, a campground actually.  We were staying in a "bungalow" that had three beds (although we paid to have the whole room to ourselves, only 15 Euro a night and we also had a 10% discount off of that from when we stayed at another of this hostel's chain in Prague).  It was sparse, and it got cold at night, but the grounds were actually very beautiful.  There was a pool (which we never saw or visited), a supermarket, a bar and a restaurant on the grounds.  Aside from being incredibly inconvenient (about an hours trip to the city), it was a pretty nice hostel and for the price I was just fine with it.  My only wish was that the walls be thicker.  They were so thin that you could hear absolutely everything from surrounding bungalows and also, whenever the wind blew, or someone in a neighboring bungalow moved, our bungalow would shake.  That was weird.

Thursday morning, we ventured in to the city and spent most of the morning searching for somewhere that wasn't out of Roma Passes (25 Euro: three days unlimited use of public transportation, entrance to first two sites free, discount entrance at subsequent sites).  We also ate gelatto and had pizza (Lisa: I am sorry, I know that Italy has more food than just pizza and pasta, but that is mostly what we ate, I felt like I was betraying you the whole time).  In the afternoon we took the free tour of downtown.  We saw the Spanish Steps, various important buildings in Rome, the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon.  Then we found sandwiches and ate by the Trevi Fountain, before heading back to the hostel.

Friday we visited the church whose crypt is covered in bones (NO JOKE, COVERED. IN. BONES.), it was crazy cool and crazy creepy.  Then we took the free tour of the Colosseum, it was not very good and didn't even go in the Colosseum.  So we paid 10 Euro (with free entrance from our Roma passes) for a guided tour of the inside of the Colosseum, Palantine Hill (where ancient Romans lived) and the Roman Forum (where business was conducted in ancient Rome).  Our tour guide told us some really great stories about the Colosseum, and the ruins were amazing.  This was our best day.  We ate hand made pasta for dinner, amazingly delicious.

Saturday we went to the Vatican and took a guided tour.  Expensive, but worth it just to skip the lines (HOURS of them).  We saw so many amazing ceilings, including the Sistine Chapel!  We also saw the St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church in the world!  I even saw the window the Pope comes out of every Wednesday and the Swiss Guards (they have silly outfits).  Then we tried to see some more ruins, but it started raining so we went home, had dinner at the hostel and went to sleep.

Sunday was a clusterf**k.  We got up at 6:30am, checked out at 7:30am,  took the bus/metro to the train station, RAN for our train which departed at 8:22, took the train four hours to Bologna, took the bus to the airport where we waited for four hours, took a plane to Frankfurt Hahn, a bus an hour and a half in to the city and then the metro to our hostel.  The cleaning lady, for whatever reason, did not clean the hostel so we slept on....dirty sheets.  IT WAS SO GROSS.  Also, because of Pfingston everything was closed so we ate in the hostel.  It was OKAY.

I will add pictures later and write about picking up Mom and Lair from the airport and their visit to Bamberg!