Rome, Italy

Day One:

During this leg of our European Tour, I was able to meet up with my parents and family friends. That means free lodging and food! After out flight, Ivanna and I showered and enjoyed the spacious air-conditioned hotel room that we were staying in. Right after, the family went to dinner with Father Joe, a priest in training from my church at home. Here, we had our first Italian gelato. We tried to check out the shops that were around but unfortunately they were all closed.

 

Day Two:

Everybody got up early to have mass with the Pope. It was wonderful, but people often treated it more like a concert. So rude. Since Ivanna and I had been traveling for a week, we decided to escape to the beaches of  Santa Marinella. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TRAVELERS TO DO THIS. The break from walking everywhere was so refreshing.

 

After burying our wallets under our umbrella, we stripped to our swimsuits and swam the long, deep way out to the rocks. We were amazed by the blue everything! The beach day was almost ruined when I nearly stepped on a cluster of sea urchins. Yikes! Some people were playing volleyball, and being the volleyball-obsessed co-coaches that we are, we wanted to join! …But the people were wicked good at playing in a foot of water…and we weren’t, haha. Instead we played with some other girls. We missed the train we wanted to get on to get home so we went to dinner by the water instead and ate calamari at a restaurant with very strange employees.

 

 

Day Three:

This day was absolutely insanity. We woke up super early for a tour of the Colosseum and Roman forum. It was super cool and educational but absolutely exhausting (especially in comparison to the beach!). At one point I tried to climb inside the coliseum like Ezio in Assassin’s Creed but was told to get down. I’ll get ’em next time.

 

 

The fam bam enjoyed lunch by the Spanish Steps. Our second tour was much worse than the one with our wonderful tour guide Marco. When we passed the Spanish Steps, we didn’t even get to walk up the steps! We bailed after the Trevi Fountain. What can ya do? We went home and I squeezed in a nap before we went shopping and dining for my mother’s birthday. We ate at La Isla Pizza where my parents dined the night before. Somehow, they became best friends with the employees and got a shit ton of food. Hey, that’s my parents for ya.

 

 

After dinner, we ran into the cousin of Amy, one of the family friends with us. We grabbed gelato and a received a private tour of this cousin’s fancy, famous suit tailors shop. It was pretty crazy that all of the garments were completely hand-made. Color my impressed!