Our first night in Rome was not the most ideal introduction to Italy. Our flight was really late at night to begin with, not getting us to the Rome Ciampino airport until after midnight. We then had to wait forever for the luggage to come out. We waited for about an hour, until finally it was all unloaded and squared away, and then headed outside to take the Terravision shuttle bus to the city center. We weren’t too worried about how late it was, because we had really detailed directions to the hostel, and it was right next to the area where the bus was going to drop us off.

Then we got there. By this time we were quickly approaching 2am, and both of us just wanted to get to our beds. We got off the bus, and followed the first bit of the directions. Unfortunately, this bit required us to walk through the closed train station.

We walked down the street a little further, trying to use the extremely poor map we had printed off the computer with the directions. But there were no streetlights, no open businesses, and no lights from inside windows. Just black.

As we walked down the dark street, we passed whole mobs of homeless people, camping out under the eaves of the train station. This made us just a little nervous. There were no other people to be seen anywhere. The other people who had been on the bus with us had disappeared.

And then there was the smell. The entire area smelled like urine. It was the bathroom of the locals bums, and we were walking straight through it. This was obvious from the actual piles of crap that we had to dodge as we walked along the sidewalk.

We found a road tunnel that cut under the train station, and decided to follow it since we had to get to the other side somehow, according to our directions. As we walked, about 6 police vans when racing by, with full lights and sirens. Just a little unsettling given the surroundings…

Finally we saw a Radisson hotel and went inside to ask for directions. I’m sure we looked a little bedraggled at 1:45am, lugging suitcases and backpacks through their fancy lobby with the white counter tops and floors. But the guys at the reception desk were able to point us in the right direction, and we walked the ten minutes to the hostel.

It was like a fortress in the middle of this disgusting slum! A tall building with locked doors and marble floors, we were relieved to have made it to our safe haven. We checked in, found our beds, and passed out.

Our first day in Rome dawned sunny and warm. We however, did not see it. We got a late start after our late night, and didn’t head out into town until around 11:30am, after enjoying the free continental breakfast at the hostel. It consisted of cornflakes and hard, crusty rolls with jam, but it was “all you can eat” style, and we took advantage of it!

Our first stop that day was the Vatican. We had planned to spend the day inside, touring and taking pictures. When we got there, we saw a long line of people, wrapping from the entrance, around one side of the building. We kept walking, looking for the end. And the line just kept wrapping. It went on forever! We never actually saw the end, since we gave up after looking down at least three football fields worth of line (not single file either, it was more like a mob, filling the entire sidewalk), with the end no where in sight. It became painfully obvious that some of the people we had seen were not going to even make it into the museum before it closed, never mind the poor people who were standing beyond where we could see. We turned around and headed right back the way we had come, re-planning our whole day as we walked.

We took the Metro back towards the Spanish steps, and got off there to walk around. It was a beautiful area, especially since they had recently put out all of the pots of ready to bloom flowers (I think azaleas…). We climbed towards the top, stopping to take pictures along the way, before we encountered our second stupid tourist moment of our vacation.

At the middle level of the steps, a man approached, rattling off something about us being English, and a football match that was happening that day. We explained that we were American, and he just went along with it, asking Bill to put out his index finger while he wrapped some string around it. As he made what was becoming a bracelet, he told Bill to make 3 wishes and 1 promise. While I watched this happen, another man came up to me and had me do the same thing. 10 minutes, and 10 Euros later, we each had a bracelet made of embroidery floss, mine the colors of the Italian flag, Bill’s the colors of Manchester United. Apparently these were the two teams that were playing in the football match. We sport these bracelets now, emblazoned with the slogan “Don’t be a fool”, a simple memento to remind us never to be swindled by mountebanks and street peddlers or their fast-talking-padder ever again.

After leaving the Spanish Steps we walked towards the Trevi Fountain, just a short distance away. It’s a massive work of art, taking up an entire wall of a building with statues and waterfalls. It was also packed with tourists, and we didn’t stay for a very long time. On our way out of the area we saw the best “statue guy” of our whole trip thus far. It was pretty common, at least in Italy, to see people dressed like statue, standing on the street, hoping you’ll give them some spare change. The man by the Trevi Fountain looked wonderful, in a full black outfit, with perfectly matching facepaint. We dropped a few coins into his pot, and kept moving.

Our next stop was going to be the Colosseum. Along the way we stopped for a “quick bite to eat” that ended up taking about two hours. All we ordered was cheeseless pizza, (don’t ever order pizza marinara- its crust and sauce.) but it was at an extremely busy Italian restaurant, right across the street from the Colosseum. Poor planning on our part, but it was nice to sit for a little while.

At the Coliseum we happened to walk by a woman who flagged us down as English speakers. She explained that we were just in time to take the last tour of the day with her company, and that it would bring us through the Colosseum and then on to the Roman Forum. We signed up, and got to cut to the front of the line with the tour group. That was pretty much our main motivation for doing the tour in the first place, but it turned out to be a really great tour anyways. Each person on the tour got a small walkie-talkie to wear around their neck, while the tour guide wore a headset that connected to them all. This way, everyone in the group always got to hear what he was saying. Brilliant! More tours should be run like that.

We learned a lot about the history of the building and gladiators and got to walk around the whole thing for about an hour. When that tour was finished, we headed next door to the Roman Forum, for our free bonus tour! Our tour guide here was extremely knowledgeable, and was able to explain a lot about the history of Rome. He was also an extremely interesting guy, with four gold teeth, a wide brimmed bucket hat, and a bright yellow raincoat. He had about the most interesting accent we had ever encountered, a strange mixture of thick Italian, some British vowels, and an occasional pinch of Count Dracula.

At the end of our tours, we got brochures and information about the other tours that this company offers. It turned out that the next day they were offering a tour of the Vatican, which allowed you to skip that outrageous line, and learn about the art inside as well. We were sold, and planned on that for the following morning.  After a lovely home-cooked dinner of Italian pasta (actually brewed by a little old Italian lady, at the bequest of the hotel Alessandro), we hit the sack.

The tour of the Vatican also turned out to be well worth the money, and not just because we cut the line. Again, each person got a walkie-talkie, but this time they included an earpiece, so that it was quieter inside the museum. We walked through room after room of sculptures and paintings, all done by the most famous artists of the Renaissance. Raphael and Michelangelo were the major players, and the tour guide (Count Dracula again) knew so much about them!

One of the most incredible parts of the tour was the Sistine Chapel. This was another area where pictures were completely forbidden, but it will be hard for us to forget how beautiful it was. There were places on the ceiling that made you squint, to see if it was painted on, or an actual piece of the ceiling. All of it was painted though, and the tour guide could tell us about any of the scenes, in depth, that covered the entire room.

The last stop on the tour was St. Peter’s Basilica. The entire enormous church was jam packed with folding chairs, in preparation of Easter Sunday, which was only 2 days away. We were actually in the Vatican on Good Friday! The walk through the Basilica itself was actually extremely short, compared to the rest of the tour. We were ushered through quickly, since it was such a busy time of year. They had a lot to do to get ready for Easter, and tourists made it difficult.

We left the Vatican just around 12:30, and after grabbing a quick lunch from a street vendor, we went back to the hotel to get our stuff. We caught the bus back to the airport, and headed off to our next stop, Venice.