All Roads Lead to Rome (but all planes get delayed)

After Portugal, I spent a quick 14 hours in Glasgow unpacking and repacking and then it was off to Rome. We had more than our share of problems trying to get from Rome to a hotel, but eventually, we made it. Once we were done dealing with struggles that consisted of our reservation being cancelled and language barriers and we had made it safely to a B&B, we decided to head out and explore Roma! Melissa and Steph had both been there before, but I had not so I'm pretty sure I was most excited. I LOVE ROME. Seriously. I think it's so cool how there are just these massive old things dropped in the middle of a city. Or the city was built around them, I suppose. Whatever. The mix of modern and ancient is so cool! And there's so much history! I love it. It was amazing. I want to go back.

Okay, so, onto exciting things. We had lunch at a pizzeria (duh) and then got some gelato (duh) and then wandered over to the Colosseum! The line was too long, and it was closing in like, an hour, so we decided to hold off and go there the next day. However, we noticed a lot of empty horse-drawn carriages.. naturally we went up to the guy and asked for more information, and yes, we did end up taking a horse-drawn carriage ride through Rome. Who can say they've done that? Us. And I'm relatively certain we are some of the only people that have, because the horse-drawn carriages didn't look too popular. Anyway, after our carriage ride we wandered back to some monuments we passed earlier, namely this huge marble tomb for someone who's name I can't remember, but it was actually incredible and looked more like a mansion than a tomb. I expect one of similar caliber. Then we found some dinner where I had some delicious pasta and we attempted to find our way back to our B&B. We did. And then we tried for half an hour to open the door to our room, only to realize it was the wrong door... oops. We eventually got back to our room and then had a nice night of sleeping.

Tossing a coin into the Trevi!

Friday morning we decided to tackle Rome's metro system! We took it to the Colosseum (so we could go inside!) where we were greeted with a line longer than the one for Space Mountain. I decided that Rome needs a "Wait Times" app, like Disneyland, so we can know which places to hit up at what time. We waited in the line and it ended up only taking 15 minutes.. it was really exciting if you had seen the length of the line. We explored the inside of the Colosseum, which was also incredible, and took a lot of pictures and videos of literally everything. At least, I did. You can see some of them here. We then took the metro to the Trevi Fountain, where we had lunch, and also tossed coins in and then had some gelato!

After shopping around for a bit, we made our way to Vatican City, where we were also greeted with an ENORMOUS line. I don't even have a Disneyland analogy for this one because it was actually insane. Then a nice lady trying to sell us tickets explained that the Pope was giving a liturgy.. yes, we are those people that go to the Vatican and forget it's Good Friday and expect to get in. Oops. It was really nice out, and we were really tired, so we kind of crashed on the ground for a while until we decided what to do next. A little while later, the police came and kicked us out. It was really unfortunate because that was one of the most comfortable naps I'd ever taken.. seriously though. I don't know what the ground of Vatican City was made out of, but that, combined with the heat, was wonderful to rest on. Too bad you're not allowed to take naps at the Vatican... So after we left the Vatican, we made our way over to the Spanish Steps where I had to resist the very strong urge to buy a calendar entitled "Cats of Rome." Then we took the metro to two other places that looked exciting but really they were just piazzas with fountains (wait, am I talking about Rome or Chapman?). Then we stumbled upon this nice little restaurant/pizzeria for dinner and successfully made it back to our B&B where we opened the correct door and went to bed!

Saturday was thoroughly unexciting. We woke up, went to the airport, flew to Bari where we landed during the siesta so everything was closed, wandered around until we found the only open restaurant and had some lunch, and then went back to the hotel to take our own siesta. That night we went out and found some more gelato and then went to bed, because Sunday we left to get on our cruise!

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and headed for the port. Checking in involved a lot of waiting and very impatient Italians, but we eventually made it onto the ship. We ran around and explored for a bit and had lunch at the buffet. We headed back down to our room to watch the boat take off (because we had a BALCONY. aww yeah!) and then started getting ready for dinner! Our party of three was sat at a table for eight, which remained empty for around 10 minutes until the rest of the people assigned to 603 in Quattro Venti started arriving! We met Tomoko and Bob, who's real name isn't Bob but we didn't know his name and he looked like a Bob, so that's what we named him, who are a nice couple from Seattle and they travel a LOT and go on cruises every five years without their kids for their anniversary (it was their 25th) and another family with a three year old who were wary about telling us where they were from, so I decided they were in the Witness Protection Program. Turns out they're a military family, but I still referred to them as the WPP family.

Dinners on cruise ships are extravagant. They're like, 12 courses long and usually made with fancy food. I prefer my grilled chicken and mac and cheese, but I was on a cruise ship and I was not going to be "that person" that demands to order off the kids menu when the three year old sitting next to me was scarfing down all of these exotic dishes. So I expanded my palate considerably on this trip! For dinner on Sunday, I had salad, pasta with some type of meat that I don't remember (but it wasn't chicken or turkey, so that's a step in the right direction), rooster, and chocolate Easter cake. After dinner, we ran around the boat looking for the Photo Gallery to find the pictures they took of us during the safety drill and while we were getting on board, and then we headed back to our cabin to find Victor, our cabin steward, delivering our daily schedules for the next day in Greece!

I'll write about Olympia later. Now I must go finish unpacking and repacking... the traveling never ends!