The Big Adventure Begins

Allison arrived about 2 weeks ago...so this update is a bit behind. But here it goes…

The last few days at the borgo were full of people, which was nice. But the big arrival was Allison. (My college roommate and one of the girls I’ll be traveling with for the next 6 weeks). She and I had a few days to explore the area; we went to the market, made chocolate chip cookies for her birthday, etc. It was a great wrap up to my time there…for now.


Thursday arrived. AE and I made our way down to Rome (after a bit of a mad dash for the bus and overcoming the ticket confusion at the train station). My first impression of Rome was that it is a place where everyone is trying to fit in and look cooler than they are…and there is this underlying tension or stress. It is so different than the Borgo…


We made it to the hostel and…there was Megan! Yea! (Another college friend who completes the trio of touring ladies). The Rome hostel was actually quite nice and we shared it with 3 people from Finland who were very nice. The only downside was that it was close to the main train station…which is sort of far from everything else, but that ended up being ok, public transport was workable.


We decided to just sort of wander around for our first afternoon in town. Here is what I love about Rome: just wandering around we found some great gelato, a fantastic fountain, two outstanding (and huge) churches and another awesome fountain that looked, to us, like Tritan or Zeus. Awesome.

Day 2 in Rome. Got on one of the hop on/hop off bus tours that go to all of the major sights in Rome. Our first stop was the Pantheon. Wow. I didn’t really know what to expect from the Pantheon but it was really quite amazing. It was a bright sunny day and the light coming through the whole in the roof was spectacular. (New pictures are up at www.kelseylumpkin.blogspot.com). I also liked the big booming voice that announced “Silence” every once in awhile… and then the general murmuring would die down for a few seconds and then swell again.


Made our way over to one of the piazzas where we found a bunch of street vendors selling knock off wears…everyone was willing to give us “beautiful ladies” the “best price” the “very lowest price” on the Prada bags we were eyeing. We got back on our bus tour and got off at Piazza Del Popolo..., which was really quite spectacular. But we were so hungry at this point that we could hardly appreciate it. We found some snacks and a shady bench and pigged out on bread cheese, veggies and granola bars.


Then on to the Spanish Steps. I was a bit disappointed with the Spanish steps, actually. I mean…they were steps. Oh well, not everything can live up to its reputation…


Back to the hostel, showered and headed out to the Traverstre neighborhood, which we had heard, was good area to hang out at night. There were plenty of cafes, bars, restaurants and street vendors selling jewelry, bags and just about everything else you can imagine. We had a great dinner; all bought a knock off bag and saw some tango dancing. So I’d say it was a successful evening. ☺ Topped off by an amazingly fast taxi ride back to the hostel…whew!


OK. I think that’s all for this post. I will try to catch up soon. Still to come: Day 3, 4 and 5 in Rome, traveling day and Zurich! Yea traveling!


Hope all is well with you all back home…
Love and Blessings,
KNL