Ciao, Roma!

I arrived in Roma around 8pm, the directions to the hostel told me if I landed in the 3rd terminal of the airport I should just taxi it over since it wasn't that close to the bus or train stations that were by the other terminals. Yeah, bad idea, I should had just walked over to the bus station, pretty sure it wasn't that far from my terminal, but ohwell, the taxi ended up costing 50 euro. OUCH. But hopefully that'll be one of the biggest expenses on my trip, well that and my 5 day hostel here in Rome which costed around 60 euro. 

 Anywho, got to the hotel, attempted to speak italian but was honestly too tired and just defaulted to english, luckily the dude at the front desk spoke good english. Front desk dude's name is Mario, he's an awesome dude with an Afro and a hilariously italian accent. He kinda looks like the dude from LMFAO when he wears sunglasses. He was super nice and energetic, definitely an entertaining character. He asked me what my plan was for the night, I just said food. I was starving since I hadn't eaten anything since lunch time and it was now around 9pm or so. He directed my downstairs to a restaurant/bar that is literally right next to the hostel, of course the hostel and the restaurant work together so they give all hostel residents a 2 euro discount on food which was nice. The food was pretty good, got my first italian pasta, carbonara, yummm. After I had dinner I was trying to decide whether I wanted to go out or just go to bed, well the night was young so I figured I'd take a walk around the area at least. On my way out of the restaurant I asked one of the guys who worked there which way I should go for my walk, he asked me what I was looking for, I just said I didn't know. He suggested going to a bar if I felt like getting a drink or just having a chiller night and that there was 2 near by that were pretty decent. So I said sure and asked him how to get there, he tried to explain but in the end just said that if I wanted to wait 5 minutes he'd show me where they were. Well why not? So I waited around with him, in the meantime while we were waiting for his friend to show up, we had some shots, it was some kind of italian liquor..honestly not too sure what it was but it was pretty strong and kinda cinnamon-y tasting. 

At first I wasn't sure if I should go with him since he said he would drive me over to the bars, getting in a car with a strange european guy? Well, he seemed like a kool guy so I went for it. Turns out he's an Albanian boxer, or was, he came over to Italy trying to get into the professional sport here, never made it, but has been in Rome every since. We got to the area with the 2 bars, both were pretty empty, it was only 10ish after all, so he drove me back to the hostel and went back to work, I but on an extra layer since it was kinda cool out and went out for a little walk. I ended up back at one of the bars, by then there was a few more people there so I decided to go in and a get some wine. Got a good class of pino grigio and sat at one of the high tables near the bar. There was a few other full tables of people around and a bunch more people standing outside, I wasn't feeling overly social so I just sat and sipped my wine for awhile and watched the bizarre italian music videos playing on the tv in the corner. 

All of a sudden there was a guy and girl at the bar having a pretty loud conversation, both seemed to be pretty tipsy and they were conversing in a mixture of italian and spanish which is what actually caught my attention. They were moving around a lot and kinda ended up over by my table, I somehow got integrated into the conversation and then was pulled into doing a round of shots with them, and then another round, and then the guy disappeared to I started talking to the girl -Milly- for awhile. She's from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, hence all the spanish speaking. She was obviously fluent but told me that it wasn't actually her first language, she speaks some kind of island dialect natively, and then Spanish, and a bit of tagalo -she's half Philippino- and was now fluent in Italian as well, and was beginning to learn english. A girl after my own heart, language nerds ftw. She was a hyper kind of girl, very jumpy and loud aha I liked her, definitely very entertaining and quite intelligent as well. We conversed for awhile in spanish, occasionally switching into english and italian. She had a similar story to the Albanian, she came over to Rome after she finished school 4 years ago and just never left. She'd been working at the bar for about 2.5 years now but is now thinking about moving to England to learn english. The guy returned and a russian couple showed up who she apparently knew, lots of jumping and hugging and loudness ensued. We then had a round of shots of something called Felicidad, it was bright blue and was lit on fire, it tasted decent too. By this point was starting to feel a little tipsy, and a round of tequila shots followed, by then I was drunk enough to say, 'por qué no?!' Ohman. Then a group of italian girls showed up, one had a dog, so random, and they all seemed to be friends with Milly, again lots of enthusiastic italian greetings and conversations. 

I stayed there for awhile, talked to lots of random people, and around 3am decided it was time to wander back to the hostel. Luckily it was a pretty straight forward route home, thank god, I'm not sure how well I would have been able to somewhat drunkenly navigate my way around if it was more complicated. 

Friday morning I got up around 10:30am and headed for the Colosseum. I was wandering through the streets, map in hand, and of course it started to rain, it was just a light rain luckily. I wound through the streets, and realized that there was a couple of American girls walking behind me, seemingly going in the same direction. At one point I stopped to check the street names and the two girls passed me, then it back the weird situation where I felt like I was following them. Eventually we all stopped at the same corner waiting for the light, I looked to the left and realized the Colosseum was right there and without meaning to said out loud "oh, there's the Colosseum." The two girls looked at me and then saw it too, they seemed pretty ecstatic to have found the Colosseum and another english speaker. We started talking and wandered down to the Colosseum together, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do the whole Roman Forum/Colosseum tour again but decided it might be kinda kool, last time I was there was with DHS and the tour guide, I honestly rather site see on my own, so all 3 of us went touring around together. There was some sunshine for a bit while we wandered through the forum, then some sporadic bouts of rain but over all it was a decent day, I really enjoyed seeing the forum again, we wandered up to some gardens and the house of agusto and things I hadn't seen the last time I was there which was really kool too. After that we headed for the Colosseum. We got the Colosseum and since we had entrance tickets for the forum and Colosseum, we didn't have to wait in the line. 

Unfortunately, one of the American girls couldn't find her ticket.. Me and the other girl had started heading into the Colosseum when we realized she wasn't with us so we turned around and found her back at the entrance desperately searching for her ticket. Finally she just gave up and was gunna go guy another one but I told her not to bother and just gave her mine. I've already done the whole Colosseum tour so it didn't mean that much to me, plus waiting in the ticket line up would have been such a pain and the Colosseum was only open for another hour or so. We agreed to just meet back at the entrance in 30-45mins, I was starving anyways so I went to go find some lunch. I found a little restaurant on one of the small streets not too far from the Colosseum, it was a cute little place, a little more on the expensive side but it's Rome and sometimes you gotta pay for good quality food. I got some 4 formaggi gnocchi and a cappuccino, so goood. 

About 40 minutes later I went back to Colosseum and walked over to the entrance, by then it was closed since the Colosseum was closing in about half an hour and I realized there was multiple exits, ah shit. I waited around there for about 20-25 minutes, it then started to rain again so I just gave up on waiting and headed back to the hostel. And that was the end of my journey with the 2 American girls. 

I went back to the hostel and took a short nap, I was kinda feeling under the weather, mostly from lack of sleep and the rain I think. Although I did seem to pick up a bit of a cold when I was in Barcelona. When I got into the hostel rooms there was 2 ginger brothers hanging out in there. One was kinda unpacking (K) and the other was half passed out on the bed T), I started talking to K for a bit, turns out they were traveling through Europe together because K was starting school the following week in Copenhagen for a year of exchange and his bro had just finished high school they were traveling around together in Europe before K started school. Talked to K for awhile and then I passed out from about 6pm-9pm. Had to get up at 9pm because I was meeting a local italian from couchsurfing at the Colosseum at 10pm. As usual I was running a little late but luckily my whatsapp/internet was still kinda working on my phone so I could msg V and tell him I was gunna be a bit late. We met up just outside of the Colosseo metro stop. V was a kool italian guy, in his late 20's, originally from a small town in the south but had moved to Rome to pursue a career in journalism. He actually does work in for a fairly popular paper in Rome which was pretty impressive. We took me on a little night walking tour of Rome, starting at the Colosseum, then down the Imperial street where there's ruins of an old market and other random buildings,  across to the Vittorio Emmanuelle II building, up to the top of the steps to see a nice view of the city, over to this little side street that over looked the forum which was beautiful, then down some little side streets, we passed a few churches and eventually ended up at the Trevi Fountain. I love Rome at night. There's something so beautiful and enchanting about, especially at this time of year when it's not overly busy with tourists and whatnot. 

We sat by the fountain for awhile and then he had to leave to go meet friends. So I sat by the fountain awhile longer by myself, through some coins into the fountain and then began just aimlessly wandering around the area. Eventually I was pretty lost but about midnight I figured I should probably start finding my way back so I wound my way back to the fountain and started heading for home. When we originally went to the fountain we took a bunch of back streets to I didn't exactly know how to get back to the main streets so I kind of just followed my instincts and headed roughly in the direction we had come from. Eventually I hit a main street but I still didn't really know where I was, everything looks for different at night. I wandered down the main street till I found a little pizza place, went in and grabbed a drink and then asked the pizza guy where the Colosseum was. He told me to go through this big lit up tunnel that was right by the shop and then go left. I was kinda uncertain since the tunnel seemed like it was the opposite direction from where I thought I was going but I tried it out anyway. I walked through the tunnel and got to the other side, took a left and still had no idea where I was, so I turned around, went back through the tunnel and eventually found a main street that I could find on the shitty map the hostel had given me. I made my way back to the Colosseum and was going to just metro it back to train station which was literally 3 minutes from my hostel but all I had was a 20 euro bill and the stopped machine kept rejecting it. Eventually I just gave up, there was group of italians coming through, I asked a couple if they had change for a 20 because the machine wouldn't take mine but that was fruitless, I then considered just hoping the subway thing but decided that I probably shouldn't since getting arrested or fined in Italy probably wouldn't be the smartest idea. So, I just gave up on the metro idea and started walking home. Luckily I knew where I was going since I had walked all the way to the Colosseum earlier that day, it was a pretty straight forward route. Along the way I stopped to get some pizza, it was Delicious. They really do make the best pizza here in Italy. North Americans just can't compare. I'm seriously going to miss it when I leave. 

Eventually I got back to the hotel, was exhausted, the bar/restaurant beside the hostel is apparently also a small club on weekends. The Albanian guy was standing outside and asked me if I wanted to come in, I said I was gunna go drop my stuff off and might come back down after. I never made it back down. I was so tired by the time I got up to my room, I got ready for bed, went down to the common room to check email/facebook for a bit and then went to bed. Was so tired after all the walking.