We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969

So obviously I’m having some difficulty keeping up on the blogging.  I’ll have to try to get better with this.  Anyway, I just got back from Rome yesterday, and it is an unbelievable city.

We first arrived around 9pm by train.  The trains are extremely fast, efficient, and easy to use.  I wish that the U.S. would come up with a similar system to travel all over the country there.  It only took about an hour and a half to get from Florence to Rome. 

Anyway, we stayed in Hostel Stargate… yes, like the sci-fi show. It was pretty much a dorm room.  Six beds and a sink.  Shared bathrooms in the hallways that were cleaned every single morning but were disgusting by about 8pm.  That didn’t matter much though, considering I spent most of my time out and about.

On Friday I took a tour down to Naples and Pompeii.  Naples was a very quick stop, only about a half hour.  Trash was piled up in the streets.  There were ancient buildings and new state of the art buildings.  I just got the impression it was a sort of confused city.  It didn’t have an identity, it was just a mish mash. 

Pompeii, however, was breathtaking.  Everything is still in shape.  For those of you who don’t know about what happened in Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius erupted and blanketed the city in ash.  The explosion was so huge that the mountain is now half the size that it was.  I learned that most of the people actually died from the toxic gas that filled the city before the ash even landed.  But the ash blocked out the sun for days, killing anyone that was left and preserving the ancient city forever. 

We walked on the stones that they had laid 9 centuries B.C.  We walked through their buildings, including homes, bars, restaurants, etc.  They were actually pretty advanced, considering.  They had a plumbing system, and even advertisements for political campaigns on the walls.  That’s right, people were being pestered with political advertisements before Christ.  I saw the frozen people, which they put behind glass so that nobody could touch or desecrate them.  It was still extremely eerie, as I’m sure you can imagine.

That night it was my friend Jill’s birthday.  We went out on the town and found a bar called Yellow, which turned out to actually be a bar with a hostel upstairs and a VIP area downstairs, which we got into cause they thought we were staying at the hostel.  In short it was a great time.

However, I would highly suggest not to walk around at night by yourself, especially anywhere near the train station, as Rome reminded me of NYC.  It is a huge city, and basically gets dangerous later at night as the night creepers like the bums, drunks and druggies come out.  All big cities have this problem, and Rome is no different. 

On Saturday Sam and I walked all over Rome for about 7 hours.  We saw as much as we could, including the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, the Presidential Palace, and what we thought were the Spanish Steps but were actually some other big building so we unfortunately missed those.  I thought that my favorite would be the Colosseum, but I actually enjoyed the Pantheon the most.  The Pantheon is the house of the gods, and is simply enormous and spectacular. 

On Sunday I went to Vatican City with Sam and Jill.  As we approached the city we could see the 4 person-wide line stretching for what seemed like forever.  When we almost crossed the street to join the line, a man yelled out “skip the line, English tour!” We stopped and paid 25 euro to wait in line for only about 20 minutes and got a full tour from an English art history student going for his masters.  It was probably the best tour I’ve ever been on.  I learned about all of the art that we saw along our 3 and a half hour tour. 

Now, I’m back in Florence.  Its a little bit strange, because Florence is starting to feel like home.  It was a relief to come back, as much fun as Rome was. 

Hopefully I’ll be back on this sooner rather than later.