How about Italy this weekend?

Last week me and one of my friends studying in Paris traveled to Italy for the weekend. We used (the dreaded) RyanAir for the first time because it was so cheap. We had to take a bus to a Paris airport that was about and hour and a half outside of the city. Then once we got to Rome, we had to take another bus to the train station where our hostel was. This was both of our first hostel experience’s so we didn’t really know what to expect. The hostel looked like a dirty hole in the wall and that’s pretty much what it ended up being! There was definitely nothing fancy about it.  It didn’t bother us too much because we spent most of the day touring the city. We wanted to get as much in 2 days in Rome as we could!

The first thing we did in Rome was walk to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.  We went inside the Colosseum and it was huge! Standing there and thinking about the history of it is just amazing! Then we ventured down into the Roman Forum. We both really enjoyed seeing all of the monuments but there were SO many tourists around!  It definitely seems like there are not as many in Paris. Then we made our way through some very cramped streets to the Spanish Steps. They didn’t do too much for us aside from them being crowded with tourists and guys trying to shove roses in your face….then asking for money for them. But the view from the top was very pretty! It was a great view of most of Rome and the other places we had visited that day. After making our way down, we walked through a couple of Piazza’s and found a café to sit and eat lunch at. The couple sitting next to us heard of speaking English and asked us where we were from. I said Kansas City and the couple was from Jefferson City, MO. Such a small world! After lunch, we walked to a beautiful park where we finally started to like Rome a little more because of how peaceful and beautiful it was. After vegging out there for a little, we started to walk back to our hostel and decided we HAD to get gelato before going back. We stopped at a little stand and we both got Nutella and mint. It was so good!!! Everyone was right when they said the gelato here is unlike anything in the States!

Inside the Colosseum

Amazing gelato! 

The next day we got up a little earlier and took the metro to the Vatican to beat some of the crowds. No crowds were beaten. It’s insanely busy no matter when you go to the museum. We made our way in within an hour and the museum was great! I didn’t know too much about it before but I definitely learned a lot. I would have learned more if we had done a guided tour but we didn’t have time for it with the short morning that we had. At the end of the museum, we saw the Sistine Chapel. This was my favorite part because of the Michaelangelo painting on the ceiling. There were no pictures allowed in there and the security guards did their best at trying to hush everyone in the room. After finishing the museum, we stood in (another) line to see St. Peter’s Basilica. It was amazing to see a place that I’ve seen on TV so many times. It was beautiful on the inside! It was so elaborate and there were so many rooms inside the Basilica. After that, we made our route to walk all the way back to our hostel. We stopped at a few piazza’s and then the Trevi Fountain. It was neat seeing such a famous fountain, but it was packed!!! This had to have been the touristy spot we were in the whole time we were in Rome. After finishing our tour of Rome, and probably walking a total of 20 miles or more, we headed back to the train station to hop on a train to Florence. We got into Florence and got situated into our new hostel pretty late on Saturday night.

St. Peter's Basilica 

Making wishes at the Trevi Fountain! 

Sunday morning we woke up and met another girl from DU studying in Florence for breakfast. We went to this really cute bakery and café. We instantly liked Florence a lot better than Rome. We think it was because there were far less tourists, more open spaces, and less trash everywhere. After breakfast we walked around Florence for a little. We ran into the leather markets and had a blast there! There were so many gorgeous leather goods! All of our wallets definitely suffered a bit. My friend and I did splurge on some leather jackets, though. Then we made our way to the Academia Gallery where we saw Michaelangelo’s, “David”. It was much bigger in person than what I was expecting! I’m really glad we got to see it because the rest of the museum was gorgeous, too. After the museum, we met up with our other friend who was traveling around Italy for the week and we all went out to this amazing pizza place for lunch. Mine had mozzarella cheese, capers and oregano! For most of the rest of the day, we walked around Florence and shopped in the many cute boutiques and specialty stores and the dozens of jewelry stores along the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence.

Spending time in Florence with two of my sorority sisters.

Beautiful Florence! 

The next morning we woke up early to do some more exploring of Florence because one of the girls I traveled with had to catch a train back to Rome to fly back to Paris. We went to an indoor market that is very famous in Rome. The selection of fruits, vegetables, homemade pasta, fresh sauces and spices, and everything else was amazing! I wish I could have brought back more stuff than I did but flying with RyanAir kind of limits you… We had so much fun looking at everything though! Later that day my other friend and I took the train to Perugia, Italy to visit a sorority sister studying there. It worked out perfectly because Perugia is in between Florence and Rome which of where I was flying out of the next day. I am so glad I got to see Perugia! It is such a small, genuine Italian town and not like the other big touristy spots in Italy AT ALL! The scenery from the town was amazing because it is in the middle of rolling hills and smaller mountains. The clouds were low that day because it had been raining and you could see them sneaking into the town at the foot of the mountain. It was beautiful! We walked around the area and explored that night. There were so many great views and beautiful parts of this little town to discover! English is not as expected there as the other parts of Italy that we visited that weekend.

Spending time in Perugia. 

I guess Perugia is pretty, too :)

The next morning, the three of us went to breakfast before one of my friends had class and I had to leave to begin my (long) journey back to Paris. I headed back to the train station and took one back to Rome. Then I took a bus from the train station in Rome to the Rome airport that my flight was leaving out of. Once my flight got into a small airport just outside of Paris, I had to take another bus back into the city of Paris from which I then got on the metro back to my apartment. After 12 hours of traveling that day, and thankfully everything going smoothly, I was finally home! It was such a great weekend in Italy and I was so happy I got to see everything that I did in such a short amount of time, but I was so happy to be back in Paris. That’s when it started to really feel like Paris was really my home!