► Ciao Rome!☼ ◄ || Travel

Ciao everyone!

As you might know from my last few posts, I have been to Rome!
Last week from May 18th until May 23th I was in Rome with school.
And today in this blog post, I want to share my travel story with you including some pictures of the amazing city (: Enjoy!

Day 1, Monday [May 18th 2015]; 

We left on Monday the 18th of may around 08:30 a.m. We were traveling by bus (24-hour drive!!). So it all started out pretty well until we arrived in the south of Germany. We were in a traffic jam for over 3/4 hours! Not slowly driving, no, we were standing COMPLETELY still. People even came out of their cars, because of the heat. It was about 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Everyone in the bus was getting cranky and restless. The heat was getting a bit too much, even though the bus had pretty good air conditioning. Finally, we arrived at our stop to eat something (at Burger King ^^). After filling our stomachs, we drove again, luckily without any traffic jams. We stopped once more in Switzerland, to brush our teeth and get ready to sleep. And then came the worst part, sleeping in the bus. I already have trouble sleeping in the car, but sleeping in that bus, with somebody sitting next to you, is just impossible. I felt so claustrophobic, and there wasn't any position that was comfortable. So I maybe slept for like, one or two hours. And that while the next day we had to walk the whole day! Because of the traffic jam we had a 4-hour delay. We were supposed to arrive around 8 o'clock in the morning, but instead we arrived at 11:30.

Day 2, Tuesday [May 19th 2015];

Because of the delay we had to adjust the schedule a bit. We were able to get in our hotel rooms and just get dressed for the day, maybe even shower, and then go outside to start the day exploring Rome.
My four friends and I shared a room together. So we went to our room, unpacked our stuff and got dressed. After unpacking, we had to go downstairs to the lobby and all gather.The teachers led us to beautiful churches and places. Then we went to go and eat at a restaurant. Apparently they weren't very prepared for us. We pretty much just ate fast food. There weren't many different options of food, but we did still enjoy it. After having a good meal, we walked again. At around 22:30 we arrived at the hotel again. We were all broken after the long drive, which was in total 28 hours, and fell asleep right away.

Day 3, Wednesday [May 20th 2015];

Today was the day I was most excited for. Tonight we would visit the famous Trevi Fountain. But first we went to more churches etc. Something very funny about Rome is that on every single street there are people selling stuff such as 'Selfie sticks', scarfs and other random toys. These street men aren't very reliable. They are selling illegal stuff with a way higher price than it normally would cost. Besides that if you don't have the exact amount of money (like for example 3,50 and you give 5 euros) they won't pay you back and just run away. Some of those street men are also pickpockets, so watch your bag. This day we were with everyone in a large group. All those sellers came to us and were kind of walking through us. I paid attention to every single on of them, and I saw one of them just opening a bag very sneakily. I yelled at him and he went away. Luckily nothing was stolen. But seriously, you can't trust those men. They are very annoying. Just either say "no" the whole time or ignore them. They'll go away eventually. We also went to Vatican City this day. We went with the subway which was a cool experience. Unfortunately, there was a very long line for Vatican City, so we did have to wait for a pretty long time. Besides having to sit in a bus for 28 hours, we had some more bad luck. That night when we went to the Trevi Fountain, they were renovating it. The whole fountain was empty and closed. I was soo upset! There was a mini fountain set up though so you could still throw your coins in them. So at least I'll be in Rome once again ^^

Day 4, Thursday [May 21th 2015];

This day was a bit of a lazy day. We were going to travel by bus to go to Ostia. A little place just outside of Rome, near the sea. We would first visit a church and the catacombs, then some ruins, and then we would go to the beach! We wouldn't be able to swim though because we were only there for 30 minutes/1 hour. That night we walked again through Piazza Navona which was absolutely gorgeous.

Day 5, Friday [May 22th 2015];

This day would be our last day in Rome. We first visited some more churches and went to Forum Romanum. Then we were supposed to go to the colosseum, but, unfortunately, our school hadn't booked for our group and the waiting line was about 2 hours long. So we didn't go into the colosseum. We then had some free time. We got some money and went with groups into the city exploring on our own. My friends and I went to a nice restaurant where we ate some Italian Pizza (It was delicious!!) and then walked through the streets to buy some souvenirs. If it couldn't get any worse, it started to rain. And with rain, I mean serious rain. The raindrops were like 2 centimeters in diameter and it was pouring huge raindrops. Because of the hills in Rome, all the water was streaming down, and our feet got soaked. So we waited underneath a little roof until the rain had 'calmed down'. Then we ran to the subway station. At the metro station, we went to shops like Sephora and Mango. And finally we went to the supermarket to buy food for our trip back to the Netherlands. We got back to the hotel, changed clothes, packed all of our stuff, and got in the bus. It was about 6:00 p.m. when we left. The night before we hadn't slept so much so we'd maybe fall asleep in the bus a bit better. Well, no. Even though I had two seats for myself the way back, I still couldn't sleep. I woke up every second because of the movements of the bus. So again, I slept for maybe about an hour, and I was totally wrecked.

Day 6 Saturday [May 23th 2015];

We bought some stuff at a gas station for breakfast and went back in the bus. We still had a long drive to go until we would finally arrive back home. I was already missing the beautiful city of Rome, but I was also happy to be home again with my family. As soon as I came home, I went to bed. First watching TV-shows, but then fell asleep. Back into my nice and comfortable bed.

This was my trip to Rome!

Check out my Instagram for some more pictures :)
Instagram: menesse

I hope you liked this post (:

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☀ Thanks so much for reading! x ☀

- Marit