Rome

Hello!

This is going to be a longer one, sorry!

I have arrived safely in Vienna with Chelsea and successfully saw Erfun off, back to Canada. We had a great stay in Rome the last couple days. When we first arrived, the happiest thing ever happened – there was air conditioning at the place we were staying. Straight away we set out to hop onto one of those super lame, bright red tour busses. But the thing with these stupid sightseeing deals is that you have a lot of running around to do. For example, we wanted to go see the Vatican museums the second day… we had to exchange our printed voucher for a receipt which we then had to bring to a little shop to exchange for a ticket which we had to bring to the reception at the Vatican to exchange for another voucher which we then brought to the desk to exchange for a ticket, which then, FINALLY, let us into the Vatican. So there were 5 documents which all claimed the ability to let me into the Vatican… but it’s all lies to keep you running around and not questioning the euros you spent on this crap.

So anyway, we took this bus around the city that afternoon and got a look at all the beautiful, historical buildings. We got off at a couple stops to walk around some of the sights, and Erfun taught me some history junk because he’s good at that stuff (nerd). We were completely exhausted from the heat, but we wanted to experience a real Italian meal before we took off in a couple more days. We picked a cute, little restaurant which served us some pasta and meat courses. It was delicious. It was a shame when I woke up suddenly in the night to puke it all up, but such is life. I made up for that lost meal the next day with lots of treats.

Friday we went to the Vatican (see story above…) and wandered around the museums before making our way to the Sistine Chapel in a huge mob of people. When we finally got into the chapel we enjoyed taking in such gorgeous and monumental artwork. There were no pictures allowed, but this one wise guy near us tried to sneak a few. A guard then came over and hilariously casually said “sir… can you open up the pictures on your phone for me?” and made him delete them. It was too much, I had to giggle-explode… so we had to leave. We checked out St. Peter’s Square and threw some stones at the pope’s bedroom window. He didn’t poke his head out, though.

We also went to the colosseum. There was a bit of excitement waiting in line with the other ticket-holders, when a ticket flew out of someones hand and skidded across the ground to be spotted by Erfun. He jumped a fence and chased it through the wind like a hero. Like a gladiator. When he brought it back, he handed it through the fence to the girl who looked confused about this ticket’s escape, she said thank you and tucked it away. About 30 seconds later it dawned on us that this girl was waiting in the line to purchase tickets… so this could not possibly have been her ticket. We laughed as we beeped through the turnstiles. Then we heard an elderly man sigh, and say “I don’t mind buying another ticket… I guess….” and he looked incredibly sad. Little did he know, Erfun had just bestowed his precious ticket onto some sneaky woman in line. So then we stopped laughing. OOPS!

All in all, Italy was an amazing trip. I can’t wait to come back some day!

BYE!