Day 23-Day 25: We don't do this thing called "vacation" well.

We're combining these three days because...well, because not much noteworthy happened.  After our gelato crawl day, we had decided that our final day—which had been left open in our itinerary—would be a beach day trip.  However, our fruitless search for the laundromat the night before scrapped that idea, seeing as clean clothes was becoming a necessity (to keep you from thinking we have embraced this as a 100% natural experience, let it be noted that laundry was done in Kalamata).  So we did laundry, worked on some revision, and went out to dinner for our last night at the same restaurant where we ate the first night.  We had our same waiter boy-man, though we sat inside this time.  Immediately following our staking out of a table, a man—who was clearly friends with the staff,  we found out later he was an employee—leaned over the two-person table next to ours and pretended to fight our server for the right to take our order.  It was very entertaining, in a joking manner, and not particularly creepy.
Long—and entertaining—story short, he proceeded to abandon our order to our server (his friend) and sat down at the table next to us and order his own dish while chatting the whole time.  We pretty much laughed through dinner at his stories and antics and I attempted at the end to get him to pay for our dinners (it didn't work).  We then proceeded to our gelato place where the very entertaining server had been from the day before and Sami (the man) tagged along, as he lived near the Pantheon (how many people in the world can say, “oh, yeah, I live near the Pantheon”??).  He was entertained by our lack of obeying crosswalks and streetlights, and my unconscious gestures to slow moving people blocking sidewalks in front of us.  We parted after we all got gelato and we made our way back up to the B&B without incident.

The next day was travel day, and after a slight panic about changed train docking areas, we managed to get on the right one and sit in a compartment with four other Italians, us in the middle.  Though we were left alone (to do more revision) for part of it, we were eventually dragged into the conversation (blanco piel? Must be English.  I was very sad when the lady said that, because I was under the impression that we looked tan).  Our Spanish worked enough so that we could definitely understand most of what they were saying, and we could communicate to the one guy who knew Spanish and a bit of English.  It was very interesting, and a great exercise in keeping up with Italian and seeing the differences from Spanish.

The ride itself was uneventful; the countryside is pretty and very, very green.  Getting off in Firenze, we caught another train to get to the right station we wanted and then walked the nearly 1K to the hostel, Plus Florence.  When I booked it, I knew that it was catered towards the youth set, but being here has just been...meh.  It's been weeks since I heard this much English spoken, and months since I have heard this many American accents.  It's like having all of the (pretentious) people who are pretending to be independent and go off on their own and be in a foreign country, yet come to a city that is even more catered to tourists than Rome was.  We're bored here, in case you haven't guessed: unless you like high fashion shopping, there is little to do here.  We also didn't have a map at first, so that was also disappointing.  But to be honest, there's just not much here.  So what do we do when bored? Finish our walk-about of the impressive cathedrals (all 3 of them) and return to sunbathe on the roof.  Don't judge, there REALLY ISN'T ANYTHING TO DO HERE.  We don't shop at Gucci, or Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, etc. so a bit out of our depth.  But, also in our true fashion, we began to plot how to get out of the town and do things that sounded fun: like bike riding, part two! We liked it so much in Ireland that we had been talking about it ever since, and here was our chance.  So, we've planned out how to get bikes tomorrow and go up the road to find some ruins and get some sort of exercise in.  We managed to not find the restaurant we wanted for dinner tonight and ended up walking about 5k around the opposite (not tourist-y) side of Florence, which was interesting, except the part where we didn't get to eat until half 8 at night.  So some exercise done, but biking and getting away from obnoxious tourists who clearly have a “search for the opposite gender” agenda is definitely needed.

Sunset from the Florence rooftop.

The Duomo cathedral.

Crossing the river in our dinner escapade.

Post dinner dulce adventuras.

Hercules killing Nessus.

Katie's favorite.

 

Day 22: My kind of bar crawl

Yet another casual breakfast preceded our cross town adventure to the southern area of Rome, a less touristy avenue that is home to the graves of a few hopeless romantics—Keats and Shelley (get it?). After circumnavigating the outer walls of the graveyard, JJ and I entered at the front gate which was a mere fifteen yards from where our pursuit of admission began. The tidy cemetery was strangely cheerful, and we found our way to the two graves JJ had been hoping to visit.

Moving along, we crossed the river and meandered uphill towards one of Rome's parks. Following a nice calf work out on the stairs, we decided to take a moment to enjoy the views from one of the fountains in the park, which overlooked the entire city. Lunch, a pair of triple stacked salami sandwiches and apples (Rome is our food binge city, if you hadn't noticed), seemed to be most enjoyable sitting on the fountain's edge, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. However, we had a bit of a dilemma at this point, seeing as it was only two in the afternoon and we couldn't be bothered to walk out to the Villa di Medici as planned—from where we sat, we could see the boxy, utterly plain mansion that neither of us were terribly impressed with. But on the other hand, we still had a good hour's worth or more of walking to get back to our room. What to do, what to do??? When in Rome...

Do as the Romans do! (seems to be a phrase that has caught on with JJ, not sure why...) With only one day left in this great city, I felt the need to complete our Rome adventure with a thorough appreciation for Italy's epicurean offerings, the foremost of which being gelato. Between the two of us, we have been managing six new flavours a day, but JJ didn't take much convincing to join in on a one of a kind gelato-palooza—hello, Gelataria Bar Crawl!!!

It took a bit to find the first one, since we had to get back into the touristy area across the river, but after we started, the gelaterias kept appearing! Our first gelateria was only 3 businesses away from the second, and still clearly visible from our seats. Unfortunately, we did not stop at every gelateria we passed, only those with three flavors (or more) that we hadn't tried before. This story is best explained with photos, so here goes:

#1

Flavors: Bacio (chocolate with nuts), Canolo Siciliano (an Italian dessert), and Frigidarium (we don't really know what it was...)

#2

Flavors: Bailey's, Pesca (not fish... peach), and Mora (blackberry)

The view of #1 from inside #2

#3

Flavors: Amaretto (there may have actually been alcohol in it), Torroncino Nougat (sort of like Heath or Daim Bar), and Oreo!!!

JJ said no to the Viagra option at #4

Flavors: Pinola (pine nut), Zuppa Inglese (something English, presumably?), and Kiwi...and the Gelato Boy harassing an old woman.

#5

Flavors: Crem Caramel, Apple, and Melon

While a glorious way to celebrate the Italian dessert, a gelateria bar crawl has similar results to a legitimate barcrawl—you finish with no idea what you've had, where you've been, how much you've spent, and you need to pee. Needless to say, that much gelato plus two litres of water each within ninety minutes led to a very miserable walk back (it was mostly the water that got to us, although JJ wasn't such a fan of the gelato splurge after the third gelateria—no worries, we pressed on valiantly). Fifteen new flavours down, we felt confident that the post-dinner gelato could be skipped today, even though our seven hours of walking should have counteracted any negative impacts of the gelato on our figures. Our repeat tortellini salad finished off the day and we attempted to recover by doing, well, nothing all evening.

What better way to celebrate World Health Day that to down excessive amounts of frozen sugar and milkfat? I can't think of any.

Memorial Pyramid

fountain!

why don't we have grocery stores at home like the ones in Italy???

Here's your shout-out, Sophia. You can thank JJ for this one.

DAY 21: The Vatican is the shiz, yo.

The title of this pretty much sums it up. Words are pale imitations of what we got to see, as are the pictures unfortunately. What we did was walk (saving loads of money/hassle on the original plan to get a taxi or take public transportation) from our B&B near Termini Station to the Vatican itself. We had nearly walked there the day before, so it was a pretty familiar path, and a much less self-conscious one seeing as we were wearing jeans and shirts as opposed to the cut-offs from the day before which had called an unexpected amount of attention to us (weird because the Italians aren't exactly known for being prudish). But we were going to Church, so clearly jeans and t-shirts fit the appropriate bill. I must also add that I love my tennis shoes and they are ridiculously comfortable, but for some reason, the 8 miles we walked the day before gave me terrible blisters. So I decided to wear a pair of Katie's shoes and bring flip flops in the bag for the moment we finished. One of the best ideas of the day.

So off we went, and arrived at the Vatican in good time...to hear a loud speaker going. Oh, hey there, Pope, didn't see you chilling on that chair reading to the crowd. APPARENTLY, even the Pope clears his throat! That was a humanizing revelation in itself. One of the better quotes include “I'm such a better Catholic than everyone else I know now” and “If he comes down and walks among us mere mortals I might cry” (which wouldn't actually happen; both were said with all the facetiousness I can muster [= a lot]). But, in all honesty, I was definitely excited to see him speak (in Italian!) and we took pictures and watched for a bit, until our crafty minds led us to the conclusion that we should take advantage of this (seeing as the Basilica was closed because he was speaking in front of it) and run off to experience the museum and Sistine Chapel without the crowds. Which was a good plan, except that there were just too many tourists for that to be a feasible outcome at any point.

So we went into the museum (it's around the other side of the whole country! Who knew.) and got in for a mere €8 with our student cards—almost as good as sneaking Katie into the forum as a European or lying and getting into the Ara Pacis—and beelined it upstairs. Again, I don't really have much to say except that the whole thing is incredible to see, and the fact that there were points when Katie or I could stop and take pictures of the paintings on the ceilings or walls without people around made it even better. We couldn't imagine doing it in the height of the tourist season.

So we wandered through, throwing dirty looks at the unappreciative heretics (school children) and uncouth foreigners and appreciating the impressive art. I definitely like the fact that even if we don't know what were looking at half the time, we can still appreciate it for what it is, whether it is art or architecture, or anything else. Wandering through corridors of paintings was amazing and we lamented nearly every camera shot, as they all failed to look quite right. Katie's sneaky photos (“no photos here! Silencio!”) of the Sistine came out incredibly well though, which was a quite a feat.

After finishing, we booked it back around the walled city, weaving in and out of the tourist groups as we do so well—including a nifty little vault over a metal divider by yours truly—and returned to the main plaza and St. Peter's Basilica. We munched on apples and Digestives as we waited in line, that actually moved very quickly, and soon entered. It is breathtaking; the Baroque style of the whole basilica is incredible. According to the American-accented-youthful priest who was guiding a tour near us, the cherubs at the bottom were 7 ft tall, the middle statues halfway up the columns throughout were about 12 ft, and the figures at the highest part were 18 ft tall, all done in order to make the whole thing seem smaller than it really was. The letters painted at the top, which looked fairly standard, were each 7 ft high. It was incredible hearing about it, and I tried to loiter near the group for as long as possible, but too much eye contact quickly nixed that plan.

After wandering about, we went outside, where I quickly released my imprisoned feet and we decided on a plan, which was: skip lunch, keep walking about until we could legitimately eat dinner, and return to our room. It was about half four at this point. So off we wandered, at one point following very adorable small children along an entire stretch of one street just to take artsy shots of them walking hand in hand, and made it along up behind the Spanish Steps area, looking at shops (way too expensive), and just meandering. We found a place to eat and had a lovely meal with wine, to round out our pretentious touristy image of the day, and headed back home after another gelato run, though definitely sticking to the smaller size plan. All in all, a successful and beauty filled day, though with very little methods of communication to convey it. 

Can you spot the man who wears the funny hat? Here's a hint: he wasn't wearing it today

We didn't get it.  It's Dali.  Dali doesn't get Dali.

Inside St. Peter's

Guess whoooooo?

One of my favorite paintings.