Roma

Picture 1 - Colosseum
Picture 2 - Colosseum
Picture 3 - Colosseum at night
Picture 4 - Montell Jordan Concert Poster
Picture 5 - St. Peter's Basilica
Picture 6 - St. Peter's View from the top
Picture 7 - View of Rome from top of St. Peter's

Last Thursday Jason and I decided to take a quick trip to Rome. We had planned to head to the airport at 5:15 so being the night owl that I am, I didn’t quite make it to bed until around 2 a.m. After about 2 hours of rolling around I decided just to get up and make some breakfast. George and Jason pulled up around 5:00 and, with absolutely no sleep, I was on my way to Rome. Once landing in Rome we stopped at a bar (might I remind you a bar here is a coffee bar) to get a cornetto and a my first ever cappuccino. Not being a coffee drinker, I was surprised that I actually enjoyed the cappuccino. Maybe it was the 3 packs of sugar, but either way I am now a cappuccino drinker.

After breakfast we quickly transformed into tourists. Backpacks on and camera’s in hand we walked to streets of Rome for about 10 hours, only stopping a few times for a quick bite to eat. We saw everything from the Colosseum, to the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and over to the Spanish steps and the fountains. It was a very productive day. Around dinner time we decided to run back to the hotel and relax for an hour or two. We changed clothes and headed back downtown to the Campo de’ Fiori where we had an amazing dinner. Following dinner we headed to the Drunkin Ship, it’s an American bar with American Bartenders. It was pretty interesting but we then realized just how much we enjoyed being in Catania. Rome is filled with Americans and finding someone that speaks English is almost easier than finding someone that speaks Italian. The college kids doing their Pub crawls (Pub crawls are usually big groups of college age kids bar hopping) re-emphasized just how dumb Americans can be. I was practically embarrassed to be an American for those moments. It’s one thing to have a good time, another to make yourself look like an absolute idiot on purpose!

Next we found ourselves on the outskirts of Rome at a Montell Jordan Concert, in a club called milkshake at 3 a.m. in the morning. Talk about random. Montell Jordan is an R&B singer most famously known for the song “This is how we do it” that came out in the 90’s.

By about 6 a.m., and 42 straight hours without sleep, I finally crashed.

Friday we headed to Vatican City. It was incredible! St. Peter’s was enormous, very detailed and almost overwhelming. We climbed the 551 steps to the top of the Basilica, at the top awaited an amazing view of Rome. On the way out of town we stopped by the post office and I sent Grandma a post card (so if you are reading this Grandma you should expect that soon). Out of the Vatican we headed south straight to the Tiber River, which runs throughout the city. We walked up and down the river for a couple house stopping for an amazing pizza once and then headed back to “Campo de’ Fiori” for a coke and peanuts. We just chilled, chatted and watched the different people.

The next morning our planed left at 8:40 so we decided to get up by 6:30. We were only a couple minutes walk to the train station and a 20 minute train ride to the airport…Plenty of time, Right? So we arrived at the train station at 6:54, the train we should have been on left at 6:52. We then had to wait till 7:22 for the next train. We arrived to the airport, sprinted out of the train and arrived at the WindJet counter at 8:10, the WindJet people left the counter at 8:00. We had saved a copy of our boarding passes onto our computer’s since we didn’t have a printer, so we decided to just get to security and to our gate which was literally 30 yards away. Two ladies walked up behind us at this point, they were on our same flight and for future reference, they did get on the plane. The security people would not let us by, even though we had confirmation numbers and copy’s of boarding passes on our computer screen. Instead they told us we must have them printed. Somehow, in 7 minutes, we managed to sprint two terminals down in the Rome Airport, find an internet station, print two boarding passes, threw the lady 10 euros for the copies, sprint back to the security checkpoint and through security just in time to realize that we didn’t make the bus that took us to the plane. ( In Italy there are some planes that you must take a small bus out to rather than walking on). So dripping sweat, exhausted and upset we decided we’d just fly standby on the next WindJet flight that left at 1:15, that would get us in at 2:30 p.m. Note: we have practice at 3:00 pm. After wasting a couple hours munching on cornetto’s, complaining and re-strategizing what we should have done, we decided to find the WindJet people and tell them our situation. Their response: “impossible!” Not only could we not get on the next flight but she also said “Your other tickets are as good as trash now” - Ha Ha! By this time were not happy and then, we had to throw down an extra 100 Euro to fly home. We got to the Catania at 2:15, got to the practice field at 2:30 and still managed to combine for 4 touchdowns in team scrimmage. But I did drop my first pass of the year during team scrimmage, so I blame it solely on exhaustion!