Rome!
First stop… Rome!
Our euro-trip started in the capital
city of Italy. We landed at about 9pm, had to get a shuttle bus to the main
train station in town which took about an hour, and then try and navigate our
way to our hostel. By this point it was roughly 10pm. It was dark, we were
three girls with massive backpacks on who were exhausted and had no idea where
we were going. Safe to say it wasn’t the greatest start to our trip. But
somehow we managed to stumble our way to our hostel and collapse into bed. I
don’t think by this point it had even really hit us that we were actually in
Rome, let alone about to start a 3-week long backpacking tour around Europe. I
don’t think it really hit me until the next day when we got up and walked to
the Colosseum (??!!) which was only about a 20 minute walk away from our
hostel.
Rome was such a strange place
in my opinion… it was just like any normal city and it was actually pretty run
down and dirty and there was graffiti everywhere, but you would turn a corner and
bam! There was the Colosseum, or there was the Pantheon. It was surreal. I
don’t know what I was expecting but I don’t think it really lived up to my
expectations. Not to say that it wasn’t so cool to see all these famous,
historical sites because it really was! I just think I expected more from it. I
was expecting this beautiful city that I would be in awe of and be dazzled by
everything that was there, but it wasn’t really like that. It was so chaotic
and crazy and dirty and the drivers there were erratic.
I’m making it sound like I
hated it! I’m not meaning to! I did love it and I’m so happy I went and I would
recommend anyone to go and visit but unlike Florence and Venice, I don’t think
I’d necessarily go back. I saw all the main sites so there isn't really anything else I would get out of going back.
Also, just for all the girls
out there, especially the ones who are super pale and have red hair like me, be
expecting to get lots of stares and comments from Italian men. It was so
strange. It is such a touristy place and with all the Western movies and tv
shows and things like that, you’d think they would be used to seeing people
like me but they really weren’t. They had no reservations about staring and
saying things to us. I was even asked by a waiter after we had finished our
meal for a picture. It was so surreal. I didn’t really know what to do so I
just said yes but we got out of there pretty sharpish after that, especially
seeing as his hand was inching dangerously low whilst we were posing for the
picture…
If anyone is looking for a
hostel to stay in when they are in Rome, I would definitely recommend the one
we stayed at – the Sunshine Hostel. The host is so nice. She treated us like
her own children. She gave us pastries every morning even though we hadn’t paid
for breakfast and she hugged us when we left. Its quite a small hostel but its
clean and comfy and the showers were good. That was something that ended up being very
important throughout our trip and we ended up finding ourselves judging the hostels based on their shower facilities. For three of us for 3
nights, it cost about 166 euros, which is actually pretty good for a hostel in
Rome. We met some really nice people there as well. One thing I learned from
staying in hostels is that you’ll make friends with any random person that’s
there at the same time as you.
Also, something we did
basically the entire time we were there was rush through everything. We kept
waking up really early and getting out the door by 9:30am and go see all
of the things we wanted to see and we’d be done by like 2 in the afternoon and
then we’d have nothing to do for the rest of the day. It meant that even though we were
exhausted, we’d feel like we were kind of wasting our time there. So if you’re
going sightseeing, take it easy. You’ll think there’s so much you need to see
but everything is really close together and you’ll be able to see it really
quickly. I mean, we managed to walk to the Vatican in about half an hour, and
we thought it would take us all day. If you want to see the Vatican by the way,
get there early. By the time we got there, there was a queue 4 hours long.
Needles to say, we did not wait in it. We also just wanted to see the Sistine
Chapel but you couldn’t do that. You had to buy a ticket to see everything so
it got quite expensive. Seems a bit strange that it was so expensive to get in
and there were so many stalls set up outside the Vatican selling things. Seems
like something Jesus would have been very much against…
If anyone is planning on going to Rome and has any questions, feel free to ask!
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