Vacations That Change Your Life: Day 3

Sunday: We got ourselves up fairly early today to make it out of the hostel by 8:30a but that definitely didn't happen. At least we ended up eating the hostel's breakfast, so we didn't have to take care of that when we finally left at 9:45a. Breakfast was actually amazing; so good that I had the same thing all three days. A caffé latte, french toast with banana slices and honey on top, and a glass of orange juice. All for five euros!

We had a plan for the day but we didn't have a schedule. We knew we wanted to go see the Colosseum but we didn't know exactly when, how much time that would take, exactly how far away it was, or what we would do after. We sort of just started walking in that general direction and enjoyed the sites along the way. We saw ruins scattered around various parts of the city- a theme that is magnificently present all over Rome and completely boggles the mind. I took a video of an old Italian man playing fun music on his accordion, we enjoyed the architecture and warm colors of the Italian buildings, and far sooner and much more suddenly than we expected, God pulled back the curtains and we were faced with this:

It was one of those moments where the wind physically was knocked out of me; like when you get kicked in the chest. The Colosseum: an ancient, man-made structure that continues to stand tall; something that sits in the middle of a bustling, modern city; a grand display of humanity- the things human beings are actually capable of creating with their own two hands and the acts they are more than capable of of committing agains other living creatures. After all, this structure was built by Jewish slaves and was built as a stadium for murder matches. And on that note, the Gladiators who fought, killed, and died within that stadium were slaves as well. Imagine if I took you to a gigantic pile of stone and materials, handed you a floor plan of the Colosseum and said, "build it." Can you also imagine being told you have to earn your freedom by fighting to the death- of you or another? Can you imagine standing on the edge of this massive building, filled with 60,000 shouting people, and having to actually step inside? And not only that, you have to take the weapon in your hands and attempt to kill that man just across the way or that starved, cage-cramped beast (lion, giraffe, elephant, etc) about to be released. It is unfathomable to me the history of this structure and I simply marveled at it's grandness. What an absolutely horrifying and fantastic thing humans created oh so long ago. Long before they even "had anything."

Joe (he's not crying, he was trying to hide), Chantalle, Michaela, Selene

After our tour of the Colosseum and our hour or so of free time to walk around inside, we met back up with our group for the second half of the tour: Palatine Hill. Palatine Hill is the center of the Seven Hills of Rome and is the original site of most of the Ancient City. Palatine Hill used to be dominated almost entirely by a palace that was the home of three different Roman emperors- Vespasian, Titus, Domitian; hence the name "Palatine" (where we get the word "palace"). When it stood, it was probably the largest, tallest, longest, grandest building that has ever and possibly will ever grace our earth. The reason it is in shambles today? It wasn't struck by lighting or shaken to destruction like much of the ancient city. It was torn apart to build Vatican City; specifically, Saint Peter's Basilica. This ended up being a really really common theme throughout our stay in Rome. Quite a huge chunk of the ancient cathedrals, palaces, and other buildings from Ancient Rome were not destroyed but were disassembled to provide all of the marble and elegant trimmings required by the Basilica. Here's a great description of Palatine Hill and some of its history:

According to Roman mythology, the Palatine Hill was the location of the cave, known as the Lupercal, where Romulus and Remus were found by the she-wolf that kept them alive. According to this legend, the shepherd Faustulus found the infants, and with his wife Acca Larentia raised the children. When they were older, the boys killed their great-uncle (who seized the throne from their father), and they both decided to build a new city of their own on the banks of the River Tiber. Suddenly, they had a violent argument with each other and in the end Romulus killed his twin brother Remus. This is how "Rome" got its name - from Romulus. Another legend to occur on the Palatine is Hercules' defeat of Cacus after the monster had stolen some cattle. Hercules struck Cacus with his characteristic club so hard that it formed a cleft on the southeast corner of the hill, where later a staircase bearing the name of Cacus was constructed. Rome has its origins on the Palatine. Indeed, recent excavations show that people have lived there since approximately 1000 BC. According to Livy, after the immigration of the Sabines and the Albans to Rome, the original Romans lived on the Palatine. Many affluent Romans of the Republican period (510 BC – c. 44 BC) had their residences there. During the Empire (27 BC – 476 AD) several emperors resided there; in fact, the ruins of the palaces of Augustus (63 BC – 14),Tiberius (42 BC – 37) and Domitian (51 – 96) can still be seen. Augustus also built a temple to Apollo here, beside his own palace. The Palatine Hill was also the site of the festival of the Lupercalia.

View of the Colosseum from Palatine Hill

We are technically "inside" the palace right here. The thing was so massive that it had it's own mini-arena just off of the Throne Room; the way mansions sometimes come with bowling alleys.

A view of a very small part of the palace. The white building was contracted by Mussolini to be his summer home... "I'll take my summer home on Palatine Hill, the site of Ancient Rome, with a grand view of the Colosseum please!"

A corner of the throne room was reconstructed to give a sense of how tall the building was (if it was still standing, there would be three floors above my head in this picture; there were five in total).

Looking down at the Roman Forum from Palatine Hill

Constantine's Basilica

                 "Tempio di Romolo"            "Tempio di Antoninus & Faustina"        

       Here you can see the                   The small round dome that's

 "Arch of Augustus"                            almost dead-center is

    and a little bit of the                        Cesar's tomb; apparently

                            home of the Vestal Virgins               his real grave is there

After our tour we decided we were too close to all of these amazing things to not walk around through them. We were completely starving at this point but we were going to push ourselves through the Roman Forum and see what we needed to see!

Cesar's tomb

The grave of Cesar

The Arch of Septimius Severus

Near the home of the Vestal Virgins

Beautiful and other-worldly

Finally, it was sooooo time for lunch, so we left the Forum but we had absolutely no idea where to go to find food. We had been seeing these two chariot-looking statues on the roof of some building way out in the distance all day so we decided to head towards that. It turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous but not very important building called the "Wedding Cake" (why? Because it looks like one!). We found a bar just across the street that was still serving lunch so we went in and sat down for another glorious Italian meal.

"The Wedding Cake"

Lunch! House red, gnocchi in a cream sauce, and bread

Dessert! A flaky pastry with a honey glaze

After lunch we met back up with the same guy who did our Palatine tour but for a separate evening tour. It was a much much smaller group this time and it was a lot cheaper; I think this was just his own little thing and had nothing to do with the company from the morning. He told us a little bit about the "Wedding Cake" first. Basically what he said was that this building was constructed as a monument to Vittorio Emanuele II (it's real name being "Il Vittoriano"). Emanuele was the first king of a unified Italy. The building was finished in 1935 and has drawn a lot of criticism since its construction. The main reason: a lot of Capitoline Hill was destroyed during construction and a nearby medieval neighborhood had to be leveled. Romans call it "the Typewriter" because of its square shape and conspicuous white, marble façade. A fun fact about one of the horses (I'm not certain which one): these statues are so big that, in celebration of the building's construction, 11 full-grown men ate a very fancy dinner in the belly of one of them!

We walked next from Il Vittoriano to "Trajan's Column."

After the column, we walked to the basilica of Saints Philip and James where their tombs are enshrined. Unfortunately none of my pictures there came out very well so I don't have any to post on here. :( I guess it's okay though because this post is wanting to break the record for "ridiculously longest." 

After the basilica, we walked to....... the Trevi Fountain! It was absolutely packed with people but I managed to get a few good pictures and feel like a silly tourist; I had felt like a cool one at the Colosseum and Palatine Hill.

                                       

After seeing the Trevi, we walked by the Pantheon but it was too dark to get good pictures. Not to worry, I went there during the day on my last day in Rome- good pics will come! Lastly for today, we visited the "Fountain of the Four Rivers." I'm just going to put up one picture here but you can see more in my gallery (gallery.me.com/ranthy). Well, once I have them all up that is. :)

And finally, we ended this glorious day with a glorious Italian dinner. We started off with the house white wine and then we gorged. I ordered Pizza Marinara, which was quite simply a pizza crust smothered with fresh tomato sauce, sprinkled with basil, and topped with a few pieces of roasted garlic. And that was it! No cheese, no ham, nothing else. And it was, believe you me, oh SO good. I have never tasted a more fragrant tomato-based sauce in my life than what came on top of my pizza. As if the evening couldn't get any better, my family called my french cell through Skype. And of course, because we all know that my bad luck was gone at this point, they called me just after I finished my pizza. I got to talk to them for at least 20 minutes and unload a little bit of the bad but mostly all of the wonderful things I had seen and done in the last 24+ hours. It was just the perfect little topper to my day. :)

Bonna appetito! (I made that up  =P )

After enjoying our dinner experience for a good hour or so, it was time to head back to the hostel. When we left the ristorante it was raining. I had my umbrella but not everyone in our group had a means of staying dry for the walk back to the hostel. Basically, it wasn't much longer than 20 minutes of walking in the rain that three out of six of us were not going to take any more and decided to call a cab. I was not willing to pay for that and since I am, after two months of this sort of thing, rather conditioned to walking (even in the rain) I announced my intention to find my way to the hostel on foot. Two others agreed to walk too so the three of us set off for the "second half" of our journey back to dryness. I put that in quotations because that's what you should do went something turns out not to be true, right? Well anyways, Joe, Selene and I continued to walk for at least another 10 minutes in the cold and wet before Joe started to get frustrated with how long this was all taking. I would elaborate but there's no need- basically, our map-reader had been making wrong turns here and there and we were not really making any progress back to the hostel. In a way, I don't really fault her for this. The map was hard to read and it's tough to admit to making mistakes that put others in a bad position. Still, Joe started getting a little snappy with Selene and he pretty much just took over the process of getting us to our hostel. By the time we got back we had been in the cold and rain for 45 minutes, on foot, and in bad spirits with each other. Not our finest hour but at least I was still on a roll with letting every negative thing slide right off my back. :)
We checked into our new room right after that (the 6 of us all together with no strangers for the next two nights) and I went straight up to our room. Needless to say, we were all rather épuisé after this long day, but we all dealt with our exhaustion in different ways. For instance, Joseph, Chantalle, Selene, and Michaela went down to the hostel's bar for the next hour and half and Roshanna and I each took showers and got in bed.
Phew! This was an extremely full and filling day for me. There were some low points to the day but I only remember them now because I wrote about them in my journal; they haven't managed to stick in my memory. This day was a grand experience in itself and I think I might remember it for the rest of my life; if not that long, at least long enough to tell my children about it one day. Thanks for reading!
Tomorrow, just you wait:                      VATICAN CITY!!!!!!!!!!

Vacations That Change Your Life: Day 2

Saturday: Fortunately, I was able to sleep fairly well during the night. I got myself up around 7a to re-pack my things and then it was time to tackle the next phase of Operation Short-Out Samantha's Nervous System: Paris. My second train did not conveniently leave from the same station I arrived in. No, of course not; that's too easy! The station I needed to be at was across the Seine river and was far enough away that some people prefer to take the Métro to get there. Oh great.... I'm in the most touristed city in the world, by myself, so early that it's still dark out, and I might have to take the Métro? You gotta be kidding me. Christine had recommended I walk to the station, that it was very simple but I had no idea where I was. So when I got off the train I went up to the first conductor I could find and asked where Gare de Lyon was. The way she described it, it sounded simple. I had 45 minutes until my next train was going to leave so I decided to gather my courage and do the walk.
It was very cold and foggy outside but I must say, crossing the Seine in Paris, or really just being IN Paris for 15 minutes can truly excite the senses. I suddenly remembered that I was going on a ridiculously cool vacation and I started to perk up a little. I did end up finding the station with no problems- there were signs leading me all the way there. I had a little trouble finding my platform but once there, I realized I still had 20 minutes to kill. So what did I do? Ha ha haa I bought a "mega" Pain au Chocolat of course! It was not my favorite breakfast in the world but the food itself was incredible; definitely worth the 2.50 euros. I was able to board my train soon after that and I realized why my ticket was so expensive: I had been put in first class. Mon Dieu...
I decided to suck it up and I tried to get myself over the traumas of yesterday evening. I found an empty chair in first class and settled into this very comfy spot to enjoy my yummy Parisian pastry. I had been fooled into thinking my bad luck was gone, but no worries, I was reminded of its continued existence in no time at all. Within five minutes a guy came up to me to say I had taken his seat. He had the ticket to prove it so I had to leave. The problem with buying a ticket (like I had to) so close to a train's departure is you are often just given permission to ride and no place on the train. That was me. I spent the next hour and a half sitting on the filthy stairs outside of the train's bathroom waiting for a conductor to come around and give me a sit. I eventually gave up, thinking they weren't going to bother checking tickets and I just went back into the compartment to look for a free seat. There was a very nice Bob Marley-looking guy who told me that the seat next to him was free so I sat there. Well, it turns out that it was sort of free- it was actually his friends' seat but his friend kept getting up so he told me I could sit there. When the friend wanted his seat, we just crammed the three of us into two. The guy who offered me the seat is Joseph Kemgang- a semi-celebrity from Paris. He and his friends were on their way to their next wheelchair basketball match. I noticed pretty quickly that they were all handicapped in some way. Joseph and two other guys were in wheelchairs, one was missing from his left elbow down, another had a cane, etc. I guess they are members of the Parisian wheelchair basketball team but I didn't know who these guys all were until they were leaving. I had been sitting next to very nice Parisian sports stars for five hours and I didn't even know it! Wow. Joseph was really cool too; I had wanted to write in my journal during the 6 hour train ride but he wouldn't let me- he talked and talked and talked... and only in French! It was difficult to communicate at times but I got through it. He was very down-to-earth and talked a lot about the importance of communicating with other people. He mentioned once, "Do you remember earlier when you were sitting over there writing, and I was over here texting. We're sitting right next to each other and we aren't going to pass the time talking? We can't just talk because we're strangers? That's a problem; I think people should talk to each other. People only talk to strangers when they have a problem they need help fixing. French people say 'Bonjour' and 'Pardon' and that's it! What's wrong with talking to people?" Of course, that's not exactly how he said it but that was his point. They got off the train about a half an hour before my stop so I had time to think over the past few hours. And I remember thinking that this was kind of a weird experience, but is probably something I'll never forget. I can picture it now: "You remember that time you were taking a train from Paris to Nice and you sat next to the handicapped wheelchair basketball star and he told you that people should talk to each other? Good times."
When I got off of the train in Nice, I felt soooo much better. What a g o r g e o u s city! The sun was brilliant, the ocean was sparkling, and I was on my way to Rome. Wowzers. I walked from the train station to the beach to meet up with my group and once there, took some great pictures of the coastline. We seven were all reunited in no time and then it was time for lunch. We found a great Italian place that was still making pizzas for the day and we sat down to three large, incredible pizzas. I'm a little sad to say that I was so hungry I forgot to take pictures of the pizzas before we ate them. But I guess it's okay, because they had to have been really good for ME to forget to take pictures. :) After lunch, I bought a creamy coffee and then we got ourselves strapped in and ready for the walk to the bus stop. While waiting for our bus we saw floats coming down the street in celebration of Le Carnival. I actually can't really explain to you what carnivale is because I don't know much about it myself. But it's going on until March 8th so hopefully I'll figure it out soon.

Welcome to Nice!

I just love that these seagulls flew by right then :)

A shot of the parade.... the floats and balloons were sea creatures

The bus took us all the way to Terminal 2- our terminal. We got there about 2 and a half hours before departure so we took our time eating leftover snacks and drinking water bottles; all the things we would have to throw away before security. We crammed our day bags and purses into our suitcases (Easy Jet only allows one single carry-on per person) and then we got in the security line to just "get it over with." I had thought my bad luck might be gone at this point, but it isn't so. In fact, it wouldn't leave me until I left the country. In security, my toothpaste, make-up remover cream, and my facial moisturizer all got chucked in the trash. After that lovely episode, we got in line to show our boarding passes and I was told my bag was too big. I tried desperately to shove things in my pockets to make it fit in that stupid metal square, but it was to no avail... I had to pay the 36 euros to check it. I asked if I could have my things back since my bag was being checked anyways but no, that's not possible. Needless to say, I think my eye was twitching, my neck tweaking and I was shaking all over when I sat down on the plane. That's right: I had gone crazyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!! :)

Roshanna captured this gem of a photo almost immediately after I sat down in my seat from my security fiascos. So I guess this is my "I've completely lost touch with sanity" face. I told her afterwards that it might also be my "Hi there, I'm going to kill you now" face.

I decided that if I had any chance of getting rid of my bad luck before vacation really started, it had to happen then, on the plane. I was frustrated and beaten down to the point of tears but I absolutely refused to let things take that turn. So I took a giant breath and forced all of my focus and all of my energy into letting everything go. I tried to let the stress flow out of my limbs through my fingertips and toes, and I immediately threw away or ignored every negative thought that entered my mind, no matter how small. I used the hour and a half flight to Rome to flip through my travel book and write down all of the things I wanted to see in Italy. It was a great distraction. By the time Rome came into view through our little plane windows, I was feeling so much better. A little numb, in a way, but much better. I was at that point where if you asked me if I was happy I would have said, "absolutely!" but it would have been in a defiant way. Like I was completely ignoring and paying no mind to anything negative. If you told me that your dog had just died I might have said, "that's too bad" and walked away. But hey, it was better than being the wrecking ball of stress I had been before.
Once in ROME (omg we were in Rome!!) we waited a good 15 minutes for my suitcase then found Allie's friend Ricardo. Allie was going to be staying with Ricardo for most of the week and it was so great that he met her at the airport, because he was able to find us a cheap taxi to our hostel. The taxi ride was rather interesting. Actually, it was more like that Mulholland Madness ride in Disney's California Adventure. Italians drive just the way you would expect them to- the way that makes you want to just close your eyes until it's over. However, I chose to keep my eyes open for this whirlwind adventure to see a little bit of the city. The streets were beautiful; chock-full of little cafés, pizzerias, ristorantes, and chic boutiques. And it was like this for about 20 minutes. We were just driving along, admiring Rome. And as we were, something really strange and very big popped out in front of us. It was gone in an instant but it was burned in our minds as soon as we saw it. And I couldn't believe how close we got to it...

Recognize this? If not, there are about 100 pictures of it in the daylight coming your way ;)

After this dazzling discovery, I knew my bad luck had been left in the dust. I was in Rome... glorious Roma! It was time to check in to our hostel, enjoy my first Italian meal freaking IN Italy, and relax. And so I did! When we got to the hostel we received some bad news: the six of us were spread out all over the place for the first night. There were three of us in the same room but the other three were going to be singles in rooms for four. It was only the first night that would be like that but no one was really happy about it. Except for me; I couldn't be bothered! Anyways, we paid for our rooms, got it all settled who would be where (I was in the room with the two others), dropped off our things, and went... to... DINNER. There was a cute ristorante/pizzeria just on the corner of our street and it had a great (and cheap) menu, so it was an easy decision to eat there. It was nearly impossible to choose what I wanted for my first meal in Italy and I don't remember how I did. All I can do now is show you the pictures and let you have your own little moment over there. ;)

My totally mouth-watering shrimp and artichoke pasta tossed in a buttery, flavorful sauce!

My dessert: You guessed it buddy- that's a freaking Cannoli right there!

So happy at this point :)

Loving life and living it up!

We were pretty exhausted by the time dinner was done so we headed back to the hostel for bed. I made my bed, got myself already and pretty much crashed. We were lucky to have met our two roommates before bed, too. They seemed perfectly nice (and normal) so it was easy to sleep with them in the room. Although my pillow was hard as a rock, everything else was in order and I was drained enough to sleep through the night. Tomorrow: the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and more!