When In Rome...

you gotta eat a lot of gelato. So I did! AJ and I went to Rome this past weekend (November 26-28). Another quick trip, as is the norm, but we managed to see a lot of things. We left Glasgow at 4pm from the international airport, landed in London Heathrow and had to transfer planes to get to Roma. Got to Rome around 10pm, took the train into the city and then walked from the termini to our hotel. Our hotel wasn't quite what we expected, the picture on the website was a little different than what it actually looked like, but it was still nice. We went to bed early as we had a lot of sightseeing to do the next day.

Our hotel. Its the one in the left hand side that says "Veneto Hotel". This is how they market it though.

Saturday we got up and headed out just after 9am. Our first stop was the Colosseum. It was incredible - we weren't even out of the metro station yet and it was right in front of us! Very overwhelming and beautiful. From there we walked up to the Arch of Constantine.

From here we walked down the road to the palatine.

And then stopped to marvel at the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II).

We also saw the Pantheon.

Its under construction so we didn't get to see all of it. 

 

 

After that we crossed the river to the Piazza del Tribunali and took some more pictures.

Vatican from the Ponte Umberto

Palazzo di Guistizia

From here we walked up to Piazza del Popolo, where we got our first gelato of the day and got accosted by a guy selling flowers to people. He kept trying to make AJ buy me some roses and wouldn't leave us alone. We were trying to take pictures and he took my camera out of AJ's hand and pretty much forced us to let him take a picture of us. He then followed us around asking for money - after we had told him a million times we didn't want his stupid flowers, or him to take our picture. I finally gave him 1 euro to make him go away.

AJ and delicious gelato

Our 1 euro picture, with those stupid flowers. Also, our only proof we were in Rome at the same time.

From there we went to the Spanish Steps, where we sat for a while before climbing them and venturing to the Trevi fountain. We got more gelato at the Trevi Fountain and sat for a while, watching the sun go down and the lights in the fountain come on. All the good Trevi Fountain pictures are on AJ's camera, I will steal them from him one day.

After all this walking around and sightseeing we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel and get ready for some supper. We got back to the hotel around 6 and promptly fell asleep. After a couple hour nap we got up and headed out in search of some amazing Italian cuisine, which we found a few blocks from our hotel down some slightly dodgy side street. The food was amazing, we both had pasta and tiramisu. Nom nom nom I love Italian food. After this we went back to our hotel and tried to get back to sleep as we had a busy day on Sunday.

Sunday morning we woke up, checked out of our hotel and headed to the Vatican. Its free entry on the last Sunday of the month so, lucky us, we got in for free. Unfortunately it was packed with people and was not a very enjoyable experience. We walked through the Vatican museum, went into the Sistine Chapel and into St. Peter's Basilica. It was all very beautiful, but I didn't take pictures - it just didn't feel right. There were many people snapping pictures everywhere and I couldn't figure out how they were really enjoying the artwork and the building if they were looking at it only through a camera lens.

St Peter's Basilica

  We made it back to our hotel from 2pm to collect our bag and head to the Termini to catch the train to the train station. We got to the airport a little later than we intended, but still managed to check in to our flight - only to find out it had been delayed 1.5 hours and that we would miss our London to Glasgow connection and would have to overnight in London. We got into London after our connecting flight had left and we got to stay in the Holiday Inn. We were up early today (Monday) to get to the airport for our 10am flight. We got to the airport just before 8 and spent the next hour and a bit queued trying to figure out why we couldn't check in and get our boarding passes. It turns out that British Airways' automated computer system canceled our flight reservation because we didn't make the connecting flight Sunday night (I have no idea how this makes sense, but go figure). Regardless, it all worked out and we got back into Glasgow just after 12pm today. It had snowed while we were away and it is beginning to look like Christmas around here!

One last week of praticum to do - 32 hours and 2 evaluations until I am done my degree. I am so excited! Many things to in the next couple of weeks - good thing I only have one more week of practicum to do, or I'd have to start actually doing stuff after I get home from work.