Rome With My Best Friends

Sorry I'm slacking a little! I've been super busy and away a lot (: Anyway, lets try to catch up..

Aysu, Agustin and I left on the second Tuesday of Easter vacation for Rome. Aysu and I had to get up super early to catch all of our trains in time to get to the airport, it was a little nerve racking! We made it on time to the airport and started to go through security when we ran into a little trouble.. A little advice to anyone flying RyanAir.. they mean it when they say only one bag. And Aysu with her big camera bag and me with my purse were forced to put of half of our clothes in order to fit everything in our suitcase (and still have it fit in the little measuring box). It was obnoxious and at one point we just had to stop and laugh because of how stressing it was. Eventually we made it through security and got on our flight. We only had a hour and a half on the plane so it went by pretty fast.

Once we got there, we had about 3 hours before Agustin came. So, we set out to find our hostel. Lucky for us, it wasn't that difficult to find, and it was right in the middle of the city. (I was pretty pumped that all of our hostels worked out cause I booked all of them.)

After we got settled in, we went out exploring. The weather was so beautiful and warm! We found a little cafe and had our first Italian pizza (: After that, we went and picked up Agustin from the station.

For the rest of the day, we walked around the city and went into the Roman Forum to see ruins and gardens. There, we had a beautiful view of the city.

On our second day, we went out really early to see the Vatican. Little did we know, the Pope visits the Vatican every Wednesday and speaks. We were there on time and actually got to get really close. It was a cool experience. It was a pretty long service, because they did every passage in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and probably one or two more languages that I'm forgetting. We visited a ton of stuff in the Vatican including the Sistine Chapel. There were so many people that it took us an hour to get through the line. There was also a huge museum but we only did about half of it before we were exhausted. It was so big. We probably spent about 5 hours at the Vatican and only saw half of it. It was really beautiful.

Because a lot of the monuments and museums close before 6, we had to get back really fast to see the Colosseum. That was the place where we spent the most time and took the most pictures. It was my favorite part of Rome.

The next morning, we took the train super early to our next destination, Pisa. It was so cool. Once again, the hostel was really nice. We were able to have a room just the three of us this time(which was a nice break after sharing a room with 12 people).

We rented bikes and rode around the city. First to the Leaning Tower. It was pretty cool to see. We climbed the stairs all the way up to the top. I had to stop a few times because it was such a strange sensation to walk sideways. Once we got to the top, we could see the whole city. It was so beautiful!! For the rest of the day and night, we biked around the city. It's probably the most beautiful place to just get a bike and go. The weather was also beautiful so that made everything that much better.

We only stayed in Pisa for one night, but that was enough. In the morning, we took another train to our last stop, Venice!

The best part of Venice was that you couldn't get around in the city by anything other than a boat. Walking, yes. But that only got you to about 50% of the island. Half of the houses were only accessible from the water. There were also 'taxi boats' and 'bus boats' to get around the city throughout the day. We spent only one night here, but that was also just the right amount of time. On our first night, we took a gondola ride through the rivers in the city. Our driver even sang for us!! (: We were so glad that we went at night. That meant that we were practically all alone in the canals. It was quiet and beautiful and when he sang, it made it 1,000 times better.

The next day, we got everything together and took a shuttle bus to the airport. We played card games, looked at pictures and talked about the awesome trip the whole time. We were the first people in the terminal to wait for the plane which was awesome because we got to choose seats next to each other. Once we were finally back in Belgium, My host dad picked us up and everyone crashed at my house. I spent pretty much the whole night downloading pictures from everyone because my camera was broken. Italy was beautiful and I hope to go back someday. Maybe when the weather is a little bit better...