sort of a post!

Hi everyone,

Sorry things have been so slow on my blog! I have not been setting aside the time for it, which is very bad of me. I'm in Prague right now and heading to Budapest this afternoon, which is a six hour train ride and hopefully I will get some time to catch up then. However, I did get some time to write a few pages the other night and was able to finish writing about the rest of my time in Italy. I thought I would've been able to completely catch up by now but Prague has been a gigantic party so that hasn't happened! But I figured I might as well post those pages I'd written already so this blog isn't sitting completely unused. Here they are!

Man, I am not a very consistent blogger. Apologies for that. It's a lot harder to make myself write these now that Alex is gone and isn't pestering me to do it every day. I have so much to write about, just like last time, and so I had to finally make myself sit down and do it...otherwise, I know I'd find myself in London a month from now, wondering where the time went and cursing myself for not blogging. I can't believe it's still October; it's hard to imagine that this is the same month that I went to Switzerland. Right now, I'm sitting in my hostel dorm room in Prague. I love this city so far. My friends think it's kind of over-hyped, but I didn't really hear much about it (as I wasn't even 100% sure I'd be coming here), so I think it's just great. It's actually a revelation after the snoozefest that was Nuremberg...but more on that later.

Ok, so, starting off from my last post would bring us up to Rome. I only left Rome two weeks ago but it feels like forever! So after our harrowing almost-forgetting-our-passports experience, Alex and I had a smooth train ride to Rome, where we proceeded to get extremely confused by the Roma train station. As I said in the last post, Alex and I stayed in the second apartment of her former au pair, Paola. Paola lives in a suburban area of Rome called Ciampino, which was about 15 minutes by train from the city center, and we were due to meet her at the Ciampino train station at 7 pm. It should have been an easy ride for us but we got very turned around in the train station and boarded a train that had just recently arrived. As soon as we got onto it, the train powered down and we got stuck inside the car for about 10 minutes. After that, we were worried that the train would leave if we got off, and so we decided just to stay on it—but the train didn't leave until 7:30 pm. Thankfully, we had Paola's phone number and Alex was able to call her and tell her we wouldn't be there until 8 pm. We figured out the train system pretty quickly after that and didn't have any more problems.

Paola picked us up and took us to her apartment, where we had dinner with her and her husband, Fedrigo (I think I'm spelling that right but I'm not sure, so Alex can correct me if I'm wrong.) They made us a huge Italian meal, which was our introduction to how the Romans really eat. Apparently, Italians eat pasta first and then a salad or main course. Crazy! It was really great food and they were very accommodating about my whole vegetarian situation. After dinner, Paola took us to a pharmacy so I could get some cough syrup—I was at the height of my illness (which started in Switzerland) at this point and kept having coughing fits. Then she took us to her second apartment. The place was really nice, with a TV (and cable! such a joy for people on the road!), it was an easy 5 minute walk from the train station. Alex and I went to sleep very happy to be in Rome.

The next day, we got up and ready and realized the weather might be rainy...thank goodness we took our umbrellas into Rome with us. We had planned on doing a large walking tour from the Spanish Steps to the Coliseum, but after a few minutes at the Spanish Steps we realized that it was going to be too rainy to do much of anything, least of all walking. So we scratched that plan for the day and decided to head to the Vatican museum. Unfortunately, when we got to the Vatican, we realized that every other tourist in Rome seemed to have the same idea—the line was never-ending! So we sat down at a restaurant nearby and got some pizza and a bottle of wine and waited for the line to die down. By the time we got into line, at 3 pm, it was significantly shorter. We didn't realize it, but the Vatican stops letting people in at 4 pm and we were worried that we weren't going to make it, but we just barely got in. Alex and I kind of breezed through the museum; you reach a point when you're traveling that, unless you're a student of art or particularly interested in one thing, all the museums start to feel the same...kind of boring. But we had to make it to the Sistine Chapel, which is at the very end of the Vatican museum, so we had to go through everything to get to it. I've been to the Sistine Chapel before, when I went to Italy with my choir tour in high school, so I wasn't overwhelmed or anything, but it was cool to see again.

By the time we got out of the Vatican museum, it was getting kind of late, so we decided to head back to Ciampino. Both of us were looking forward to spending a night inside maybe watching a movie, and we found all three Jason Bourne movies for sale as a package for something like 20 euro, so we splurged and got them. Back in Ciampino, we bought some wine and some (more) pizza and settled in for the night in our apartment. It was perfect.

The next day was the day that Alex made me finish writing the last blog (I so miss her encouraging me to do this!), so we had a late start, but we got into Rome in the early afternoon. We went straight for the Coliseum area and headed to Palatine Hill first. That was one site that I didn't visit my first time in Rome and I really enjoyed it; the view from the hill is incredible. Afterwards, we went to the Coliseum and decided to get a guided tour. Unfortunately, our guide's Italian accent was so thick that her English was barely intelligible. Also unfortunate: I was seized by a major coughing fit and had to excuse myself from most of the tour. Oh well...I don't think the Coliseum is going anywhere, so maybe I'll have another tour of it someday. From the Coliseum, we walked over to the Roman Forum and saw that for a bit, before continuing on to the Trevi fountain. Oh yes, we did the entire tourist circut. We stopped and had a glass of wine after the fountain before heading to another area of the city to meet up with Paola and Fedrigo for dinner.

The dinner they took us to was incredible! The name of the restaurant was "Acchiappafantasmi," which means, "ghost busters" in Italian. We had the fixed menu, which was a menu of mushroom dishes...good luck for me, since it was mostly vegetarian and they were able to alter the dishes that weren't. Bad luck, as well, since I loathe mushrooms. But it was actually really delicious. The antipasto was a mushroom salad with parmesan (good) and these big cooked mushrooms with gorgonzola (which I thought was gross). After that came the "primo," which is the pasta course. This included two types of pasta: a dish with truffle oil (so delicious) and a fettuccine with mushroom sauce. Next came the "secondi," or the main course, which were more mushroom things. By this point, I was both so stuffed and so sick of mushrooms that I barely ate any of it. And then after that came the dessert, which was three types of gelatos. And after that came espresso, limoncello, and shots of two other after-dinner liqueurs. I have no idea how the Italians eat like this, it honestly boggles my mind. Of course, dinner took a really long time; they don't try to eat all that food in thirty minutes like Americans do. After dinner, Paola and Fedrigo drove us back to Ciampino and we said goodbye to them—Alex was leaving the next morning.

Having to say goodbye to Alex the next morning was only easy because I was half-asleep when she left around 9 am...I had spent most of the night awake coughing. It was extremely sad to lose my traveling companion though, especially one that was so much fun to travel with. I was a little nervous going on the trip with her, because it's been many years since we've spent so much time together (maybe since summer camp), but I really don't think either of us got sick of each other and we actually traveled really well together.

After she left for the airport, I got back in bed and slept until almost 1 pm. Yikes! It had been quite some time since I'd done that. But my body needed to heal. Once I woke, I got ready for the day and headed into Rome. I went to see the Mouth of Truth, the statue made famous by the movie "Roman Holiday," and walked up to the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona before heading back down toward the Coliseum. On my way, I stopped at a bookstore and bought both "Roman Holiday" and "Charade" on DVD...there was some special going on for Audrey Hepburn movies so they were discounted. After stopping in a grocery store at the train station for some food, I went back to Ciampino for the night and watched both movies. It had to be an early night for me because I had to leave Ciampino by 6:30 am the next day to catch my flight to Barcelona!

*****

Alright, so I will work hard to write some more today and get further caught up. I have done so much in the past few weeks and can't wait to tell you about it!

Love and lots of coffee, Eliza