When in Rome...

For anyone that loves history...specifically ancient history...this is the city for you. Nicola and I arrived in Rome on Thursday and I have loved every minute of it. I'm glad we're staying for 5 days because this city has so much to see and it's absolutely gorgeous.

When we arrived we checked into our hostel. Our hostel has been great and we've met a lot of really cool people. As of writing this most of our friends headed on to their next trip but that just means meeting the next batch! It's located right next to the Vatican and is a decent walk or a bus ride to the coliseum. Anyways so we immediately explored the city a little bit. Can't stress enough how nice it is to be with a fluent speaker. Normal meals in Italy is either pizza or paninis (the only really affordable meal on a regular basis) but both are quite delicious. The hostel life, though, is both awesome and a bit strange. You meet so many different people and spend time with them only to separate a day or two later and most likely never see each other again. I've been doing my best to keep contacts with the people I've met but it's near impossible to do it for everyone. It's really cool though and honestly I think the best way to travel for people my age.

That night we all went down to an area on the river and hung out and listened to music and go to know each other (all of us from the hostel). And when we woke up the next day a group of us went to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. Crazily enough, this was my first museum I went to in my whole time in Europe. It was definitely impressive. The Vatican church was HUGE, almost unnecessarily so. Turns out the reason the coliseum is only half there is because they stole a lot of the materials for the making of the Vatican. Then we went on to the chapel, which was nice because it was such a hot day anything else would have been murder. Everything in the museum was so incredibly old but very well kept up but personally I can only see so many statues and be in awe. Then we went back and rested up for a pub crawl at night at the coliseum! The crawl was definitely a fun time and I think we might be doing one again tonight we liked it so much!

Today Nicola and I walked a chunk of the sites of the city. It's crazy how much history one place can have. We saw the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, the roman columns, the piazza navona, the trevi fountain, capitoline hill, and we have another two days here and we are going to try and hit up the coliseum tomorrow and there's still more to see! Definitely a lot to look forward to :) look forward to some good pictures