la.ravie: When in Rome

Mausoleum of Hadrian, known as Castel Sant'Angelo. Jets trail brightly colored smoke in the sky in honor of the Festival of the Republic.

We landed in Italy with an extra hour than expected, but still too late to do much. We took a shuttle to our hostel, Mosaic (it shared the same building as Alessandro’s, where we originally wanted to stay). Wednesday we had tickets to the Vatican Museum so we decided to just go to bed and wake up early. I highly recommend buying tickets in advance, the line just gets way too insane. Also, don’t forget to print your ticket; luckily the icon worked on my iPhone so we were able to get in paperless. Old Bridge gelateria is right near the museum entrance, a perfect treat for the hot wait (and cheap too!).

Apparently the Pope addresses the public every Wednesday morning, so we couldn’t go into St. Peter’s until later in the afternoon. But we did manage to cram in the Ara Pacis, the Spanish Steps, and the Borghese Museum. For the Borghese make sure to buy tickets in advance as well; we were lucky and got squeezed in, but the people behind us weren’t so fortunate – our time slot just sold out.

We finally made it back to St. Peter's; although we were unable to see the Pantheon, it was closed randomly for the afternoon. It was rather unfortunate since the Pantheon is my favorite monument in Rome. I only wish I could have seen it as the pagan version, it must have been even more stunning.

Thursday we caught an early train to Naples. We almost missed our train due to a number mix up on our tickets, how I hate running through transport depots. Once in Naples you have to take a metro to Pompeii, it drops you directly at the entrance of the site - pretty crazy. We walked around for a couple of hours, saw the House of the Faun (shout out to Prof. Stewart and his many lectures on the Alexander mosaic). Back in Naples I made us get pizza at L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele, supposedly the best pizza in the world (and it was tasty!). Defintely worth the walk, and the highlight of being in Naples.

Accidentally took the fast train home, which was nice, just a bigger dent in the budget than planned. A word on Italian trains: I envy their system, you can walk into the train station and buy your ticket to any city day-of, minutes before. The prices are reasonable and the trains are often. In France, tickets to the south are outrageous for someone traveling on a budget unless you plan it out way in advance.

Chaya and I tried the Roma City Pub Crawl (I can't find a website to link you to), which met at a cafe near the Termini train station. It was an okay pub crawl, nothing like Prague, and we only went out in the Termini area. I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

Friday we did the Colosseum and Forum/Palatine Hill area. We were wrangled into taking a guided tour by some cute American who's job is basically to reel people into his company. I had ultimately left the decision up to Chaya since I'd seen all of it before; however, I still think as two art history majors, we sold ourselves a little short.

After lunch we headed to the Capitoline Museum. Chaya left for the Pantheon and I headed to San Crispino for some gelato. San Crispino is a little different than your average gelateria, they keep the ice cream in silver vats, not out on display as per usual. They also serve up interesting flavor combinations, I had honey and ricotta.

We attempted Taverna Trilussa for dinner. Have you ever had a meal that you could not stop thinking about? That you have such intense flashbacks of how delicious it was that you yearn for it? Well, if not, I feel bad for you. Taverna Trilussa was my favorite meal of Rome when I went with my family in 2007. My dad and I still talk about the pasta, they serve it to you directly in the pan they mixed the sauce into it with. We even ordered their brand of balsamic vinegar to have at home. Unfortunately, they were all booked, which was probably a blessing in disguise, it looked too pricey for us anyway. We instead headed over to Da Augusta, a very local, very tasty, hole in the wall.

Post dinner we hit up the Campo (de' Fiori), a square with a lot of fun bars. Paris didn't have anything like the Campo, no central meeting area of all the young, fun people. Maybe it's because Paris is so much bigger than Rome, or that the party culture is different. It was a fun atmosphere to be around, and Chaya and I made our way to the Drunken Ship, a definite American hang out, but still a lot of fun. I highly recommend going out in this area, there are tons of bars and people just hanging out in the street. I wish we had done this the previous night as well.

We didn't get back to our hostel until about an hour before our train for Florence left. It was a mad dash to pack and run to the train station (luckily only a few blocks away), but we made it!