Day 4: Baptistery, then First Day in ROME

Basic Itinerary: Return to Florence to go into baptistery, return to hotel, gather luggage, train to Rome. Arrive in Rome. Put suitcases in our bus, meet other groups. Go to Santa Maria of Angels, the Diocletian Baths, and National Museum of Rome. Walk to: Maria Maggiore, St John Lateran, Circus Maxims and possibly visit Baths of Caracalla. End up at Teatro Marcllo where we walk meet the bus. Mingle, dine, and go back to hotel.

Actually what we did! : We woke up at 6:45am, showered and then headed to the rooftop to meet Avery for breakfast. I ate canned peaches, cereal, a bun with meat and cheese, toast, yogurt and hot chocolate. Avery went outside and took some amazing photos!

Breakfast was pretty good! My favourite part was the peaches, yogurt and hot chocolate. After breakfast, we went to our rooms and got packed to go to the baptistery. We packed our bags as we knew when we came back, we would be in and out with all our bags for the last time, as the plan was to catch the train to Rome. We walked through the mall, and headed to the baptistery

15 minutes later, we were flabbergasted at the beauty of the baptistery. The detail is both amazing and very odd. For example, a monster with snakes emerging from his head, eating a human, whilst having one human in both hand. Who comes up with this stuff? So much of that odd stuff in these churches, very intriguing.

The baptistery was quite small, so, soon we were out onto our next activity; shopping/free time. I captured a photo of the Gates of Paradise, made out of pure gold. We has 45 minutes, and had to meet up at 10:15. Unfortunately, most stores didn’t open till 10:00. Until 10, we wandered, street to street talking, exploring! AT 10:00, we went into H & M, and Avery bought some socks, and a dress! We spotted Avery’s mini exactly, except the rims aren’t “as nice as mine” (Avery) apparently! At 10:15, we started back to hotel, where we grabbed our bags and said good-bye to our great hotel; Hotel Kraft, would recommend!

We then made our way to the train station, and took the 1 1/2 hour train ride to Rome! I tried to sleep the whole way, but had troubles, and probably only spent 20 minutes of it actually sleeping.

We arrived at train station in Rome, to a nice cool breeze. We waited for around 30 minutes for our tour guide to show up, and then  headed to our bus for the trip to drop off our bags. Its massive, and very pink. W dropped off our bags, and then met our other groups. They are smaller than us (their group size), and they seem alright! We then took a walk to the Rome Museum. Avery took some photos around the place, then we headed in! It was pretty cool in there. Sadly, they made you leave bag in storage outside, which had my  batteries in it. My camera immediately died when I got in, so I got no photos. The museum was mostly about the baths that Romans went in, and it had some of the baths and a pool. We then headed to another museum, and I got my batteries for that one. Me and Avey, to change things up, decided to try and pose like the paintings!

 

We then went into the Santa Maria of Angels, a church! Another amazing structure, filled with unreal paintings.

After that, we headed to the Circus Maximus, where we just walked past it. We also passed the coliseum, and an amazing arch. I didn’t take many phots as we passed by quickly and we are coming back in a few days! HAPPY ST PATRICK’S DAY ALL!

Circus Maximus is a place where chariot races used to occur! I took some cool photos, and saw this man who looked odd. Thought it would be a cool photo, not sure what he was doing.

We then made our way back to bus, and took an hour and a half bus ride to our place for dinner, which I slept the whole way! Dinner was pretty good, fooled around with camera trying my best to take good photos of the food. These pictures are for sure better than my average ones! We ate lasagna, bread, and pudding. Avery, since she is vegetarian got a white sauce pasta with mushrooms! For dessert, we all got pudding. Everything was good, but nothing was very great. We then headed to our new hotel and checked in, it was a five minute walk from restaurant, and the bus was there waiting so we could take our bags.

We checked in, and the lobby looked nice so that was a good start. We then went into our room, and it was very lame looking. 4 single beds in one room, with a minture bathroom. Avery went ino our room and used wasrooom and saw a centipede. The shower was broken, and people kept joking about bed bugs. Also, we got this hotel which is almost an hour from Rome instead of our old one which we should have gotte, which was five. I’m not sure why exactly, but I;m sure I’ll find out tomorrow. Another thing: the water isn’t drinkable and is dangerous. Bottled water should be used to brush our teeth. A bit of a gongshow, but whatever, we are in Rome! Our teacher is pretty upset though, and is contacting our tour company because of all the problems; the main one being how far away is it. The one very positive thing is that the Wi-Fi is great, which is very important to me for blogging (uploading photos is a nightmare with bad Wi-Fi as I found out last hotel).

I’ll take some photos tomorrow of the hotel, and rooms! I hope you enjoyed the read, feedback is appreciated! Gooday/Goodnight all.