So, my older brother TA (most people know him as Steve) came to visit me! I was so excited that he was able to come!! We had so much fun and I am so glad that I got to share my experience with him!! It was so nice to see a familiar face too after being here for so long. I picked him up at the Rome airport on April 19th and we immediately started sight seeing since I picked him up at 9AM, so we had the whole day ahead of us! We found our hostel and got our stuff put down and then we were off. Didn't really have much of a plan of what we were gonna do, but we knew that we wanted to see all the famous sights and we had to figure out how to do that in 2 days. We started to wander around near our hostel which was nicely placed right near the train station, so it was a good central location. Rome had a lot of vespas and motorcycles! it was crazy! My brother and I were both really fascinated by it!
Anyways, when we hit the main street we saw a tourist bus that was a "hop on, hop off" bus. It took us to all the major sights that we wanted to see and you can get on and off on any of the busses all day. It was a really convenient way to get around...and we got free headphones with it...score! (my other ones broke, so a new pair made my day!). Our first stop was the Colosseum. Oh. My. Goodness. It was so cool!! I have always wanted to see it and so has my brother so it was really awesome to see it in person and not just on the movies! It was absolutely everything that I was expecting and more. It was so interesting to hear about all the random and fun facts about the Colosseum and the history of it. It was really fascinating to learn about.
After stopping to eat some lunch...right next to the Colosseum...no big deal...we got on the bus again and headed towards the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. I really didn't know much about the Spanish Steps to be honest, I just know that they are well known. I can't really tell you their significance or why they are famous though, haha....oops! Oh well, they were still really beautiful to see! Then the Trevi Fountain...now don't make fun of me, but let's be real, the main reason I wanted to see the Trevi Fountain was because of the Lizzie McGuire movie. haha. I wanted to be just like here and make a wish in the fountain and that is what motivated my desire to go there. Again, I do not know the history of the fountain but I know it from many movies like Lizzie McGuire, When in Rome, and La Dolce Vita. It was gorgeous! And, of course I made my wish...threw 3 coins in there insuring my return to Rome someday in the future.
After the Trevi Fountain we headed back on the bus again and just sort of rode it around so that we could see everything, but the sights that we didn't know about or care for too much, we were still able to see but didn't have to get off the bus to look at. It was really convenient and nice. I really enjoyed the bus tour. Then we got off at the train station and headed back to the hostel. We were both really exhausted since I woke up early and my brother was a little jet-lagged. So we took a nap before our night started. The hostel has a bar-crawl that you can sign up for every thursday-saturday and since we were there on Thursday we decided that It would be fun to do. It was 20 euro for my brother and 15 for me since it was ladies night...i was also able to get half off on all the drinks, and we got a t-shirt with it. It started out in the bar inside the hostel and there was free pizza, all you can eat at 8PM and then from 9-10PM it was free and unlimited drinks. We hung around there for a while and everyone played flippy-cup. It was a lot of fun. Then we all took a metro to the first bar, where we got a free shot upon our entrance. My brother and I were pretty lame though and we got really tired and went home before going to the second bar....haha....oops. I wish we could have stayed out longer, but I was really exhausted and i know for a fact that my brother had to have been dying from no sleep, so it was kind of nice to get to bed.
The next day we got up and went on a tour of the Vatican. We were told that the tour would be about 3 hours long and it ended up being around 4 or 4.5 hours instead. Wow, was it tiring! The Vatican was absolutely gorgeous though! Everything about it was so beautiful. The outside, the inside, all the paintings, all spectacular to see! My brother and I were the youngest ones in our tour group everyone else was 30+, but thats okay, it was still really great. It was good that we had a tour guide cause otherwise we would have gotten lost and would not know about anything we were looking at. Statues everywhere, amazing paintings, and then the Sistine Chapel! It was extraordinary! We were not allowed to take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel and everyone had to be quite. It was extremely crowded in there too! It really was something else though. I can't imagine painting all of that including the ceiling! It was crazy cool to see! The Vatican was huge and a little overwhelming to take in all at once, but I am so glad we went and took a tour of it!
After the tour we had to find our way back to the hostel...and of course there was a transportation strike in Rome that day. No metros. No busses. No Trams. We were really far from our hostel too. So we wandered around for a few hours and went shopping and eventually we noticed that the metro was running again. Thank goodness! We had to get to the train station because my roommate, Jenny, was meeting us to stay in Rome with us that night because she was picking up her parents the next morning really early from the airport. When we met up we wandered around and did some touristy-souvenir shopping...of course...and found a nice restaurant to eat at for dinner. My brother and Jenny got along well, I knew they would and we had a good time laughing and joking around. It was a fun night.
The next day we got goin in the morning and caught an early train so that we could get to Tuscania to relax for a day and a half. We didn't do much in Tuscania while my brother was here. Saturday night we went to Cafe Del Duomo so I could show him a typical weekend here and then the next day I showed him around town and we just kinda bummed out that day. We both needed that day break so that we could reenergize for Florence on Monday!
We got going really early on Monday morning. We caught a bus to Viterbo at 7:20AM and our train was leaving from Viterbo at 8:30AM to get to Florence. Well, we get to Viterbo and we get lost...majorly! We couldn't figure out how to get to the train station for the life of us! It was getting really frustrating after a while and by the time we finally got there we missed our train. So, we had to wait 4 more hours for the next train to get there at 1PM instead. Eventually we made it to Florence around 5PM, when originally we were supposed to be there by 2PM at the latest. But, alas, we made it, and in one piece. We had a roommate in our hostel and he was from England. He was very clingy...he was kind of annoying. He had been there for a month already...just cause he could and he never shut up! He was nice, he just didnt know when to quit. We went to bed kind of early though since we were tired, and we didnt want to talk to our roomie. haha
The next morning we got up bright and early. It was raining that morning, which was kind of a bummer, but we werent gonna let that stop us. We found another "hop on, hop off" bus and decided that it would be a good idea to take that since it worked out so nice in Rome. The first half of the day we didn't need it though. We stopped at the Duomo first. Wow. It was so amazing! It almost looked fake, like a piece of cardboard that someone painted or drew on. It was really amazing looking! We got in line to go inside, which was free, and then after searching for a while, found where to go in order to climb to the top of the duomo! It was about 8 euro to climb the stairs but it was so worth it! The stairs were such a pain though! There was no room to climb, it was very narrow and very steep, and half of it was spiral stairs. Just when we thought the stairs were done, there were more...and more...and more! It was crazy! It was worse than climbing the Eiffel Tower! I swear! It was totally worth it at the top though! My legs were so shaky after all that climbing though! Phew! It was beautiful though to see all of Florence from up there. It was great!
Afterwards we wandered around a bit. My brother bought a leather wallet for only like 50 euros cause everything was half off. It was a good deal! I wanted to buy a leather jacket but even with the half off it was still 300 euro, so i gave up on that dream! We bought our touristy stuff as well and i was finally done buying stuff for friends and family back home. It was a nice feeling to not have to worry about that anymore! Then we went to the Ponte Vecchio and Vecchio Plaza and saw the Uffizi and the "statue of David"...it was actually a fake one...but we pretended like it was the real one!
Then we were really hungry so we decided that we would look for the pizzaria where the Jersey Shore cast worked when they were in Florence and we knew it was near the Uffizi so we wandered around to look for it. We had no luck though. We were getting lost. So we just ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. We needed a break from pizza and pasta so we went and got us some burgers! It was so heavenly tasting! I usually dont like bacon on my burgers but for some reason I ordered one and it also had friend onion rigns on it and it was the most amazing burger ever! We also got a souvenir glass with our drink cause we got some special edition drink or something so that was cool. After eating, like in Rome, we just kind of rode around on the bus for a while and looked at other sights like the Michelangelo Plaza. It was at the top of this hill and you could see everything from up there! It was beautiful!
Then after being gone for over 12 hours of the day, we were pretty pooped out and headed back to the hostel and went out to eat before we got back so that our roommate wouldnt eat with us! We thought we dodged a bullet but then he sat...on my bed...ew...for like 2 hours talking with us. So annoying! Eventually i got him off my bed so i could go to sleep!
It was another early morning for us, mostly cause we wanted to get out before our roomie woke up! We are so mean...oh well! Our train back to Tuscania didnt leave until 3PM so we had all day to see things and shop around. We were determined to find that Pizzaria that day too! As we were wandering around we got to see a parade. It was a national holiday in Italy that day...Liberation Day. It was a small parade, but hey, a parade is a parade! It had an old people band, it was really cute actually.
After sitting for a while and wandering around some more and exploring, we finally found the pizzaria!! It is called O'Vesuvio. It was really cool to see. They had pictures of the Jersey Shore cast all over the place and they had signatures on the walls and had pizzas and paninis named after all the cast members and their clothes were still hanging up in the back of the store. It was really cool and fun to see. The pizza was really good too! I'm sure that place is tired of Americans coming in and taking pictures all the time, but it really was awesome to see.
We still had a few hours until our train left, but we headed to the train station anyway since we had seen and done everything that we wanted to. Then we arrived back in Tuscania around 7:30PM along with Jenny and her parents. I took my brother out to eat at Dal Patate, the same place I went on my birthday with the pizza that takes up 2 plates. It was delicious as always. Then my brother had to get up by 6:30AM the next morning on the 26th to catch his taxi back to the airport so we went to bed early that night.
I was so grateful that my brother was able to come out here. It was such a blast! I mean, how many people can say that they got to hang out and run around Italy with their older brother?! Not many! It was so awesome! Like I said earlier, it was so nice to see a familiar face and it just made me miss home. I have been doing really well about not missing home too much, but since my brother was here and being so exhausted from traveling, I have come to the conclusion that I am ready to be home now. I absolutely love it here and I really do consider Tuscania my home now, but I miss everyone at home and I miss my own bed. I am excited to get home and tell everyone about my trip and everything that I have learned. It has been great!
Until next time...ciao!
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