So day 11 started with ciccio's mom, ciccio and I having to be at the airport at 6 for the flight at 7. We got there at around 6:10 and made it through no problem (small-ish airport and we flew through security). The airline was a Spanish airline so all the flight attendants only spoke Spanish and English, so that was nice. Their "slogan" I guess you could call it, was "keep calm and breath" although it was only on a few items they had throughout the plane.
We got into Rome at 8:20 or around then, so it was a fairly short flight, and even shorter on the way back. We took a bus to the metro and then the metro to the middle of Rome, then from there we walked to our hotel, hotel city. Before I get into the only part of the trip I really didn't like, I'll start with saying if you go to Rome DO NOT STAY AT HOTEL CITY! They don't have wifi and it was bad. Anyway the only part of the trip I was extremely uncomfortable in was the metro. It was packed with people and everyone was running around. But the worst part was when we finally got on the metro people were yelling "Gypsies!" Over and over then the group of gypsies migrated towards us and got all close to us and one started rubbing my arm and it was so creepy. Once Valeria (ciccio's mom) saw them touchin my arm she started yelling at them in Italian and they backed off thankfully but still. I won't be going back on the metro anytime soon.
Onto something nicer now, Rome was beautiful even if I know very little of all the statues and monuments and stuff. We took a tour bus around that showed a lot of the monuments but their English Channel wasn't working so I didn't get to hear any of the history. Oops. Anyway I tried to take lots of pictures but a certain parts everyone in the bus was standing and taking pictures too so I gave up and just sat back down. Nonetheless I still have a lot Of pictures.
Alright so the first picture is of me on the plane at 7am because I woke up at 5 and had a solid 4 hours of sleep so i was exhausted.
Picture 2-5 I'm not really sure what they are but our tour bus circled around them so id assume they are important right?
Picture 6: This is Italy's version of the Tomb of the unknown solider. It was originally built by Mussolini and the fascists in two years (if I remember correctly). Anyway after they all died the government didn't really like the idea of having a facist building so tomb of the unknown solider instead! Also I don't have a picture of it but to the right of the building was the building where Mussolini have all his speeches. So I stood where a bunch of fascists stood cheering for Mussolini 80-90 years ago (please remember exact numbers are not accurate because it's extremely late when I write these blogs).
Picture 7-8: Of course the coliseum! We didn't go inside because that is like a 2 hour long line plus another hour or two to walk through it all and we didn't have the time.
Picture 9: I thought it was an aqueduct so I took a picture of it, but like I said the tour bus didn't have An English Channel.
Picture 10: The Vatican! Sadly we didn't see the pope but through all the touristy items I basically saw him.
Picture 11: The Pantheon! From what I understand it was and is a really large church that has a little bit of several religions inside. In addition a lovely facist section, as shown in picture 12.
Picture 13: I'm not really sure but it looked cool at night so why not?!
That basically wraps up all of Saturday
Day 12! We woke up, I showered laying down in a bathtub, quite the difficult experience. Had some breakfast from the hotel. Probably the only nice thing the hotel did was have a designated staff solely to make coffee, so I had some ridiculous strong coffee that I didn't like the taste but woke me up. Then we went to Mack's and his family's apartment with all of our luggage. Stayed there for an hour or so as Mack and Marco got ready. Then we set out on the days journey of gift shopping. We made it about 50 meters until Marco, his younger brother Mateo, and Ciccio, had a genius idea of screaming that we are tourists to everyone (picture below).
Yes, we rented this bike thing for two hours and it was dreadful as we were on limited time because we had to be back at the apartment at 2:30! After riding around dying of heat and embarisment, we finally returned the rental bike, only to get another 50 meters until Marco and Ciccio ran into the Adidas and Nike shop, with brand new World Cup cleats and jerseys! So of course they had to take a look at everything although it was insanely expensive. If I thought some American clothes were expensive try 150 euros for a jersey (not signed or anything). At around 1 after a mcdonalds lunch we finally started our hunt for gifts. As we were on a crunch for time and limited distance we could travel by foot our gift options were limited so I only ended up getting 3 things even though I had planned out 6 gifts that I wanted to get! Oh well. Some people will have to settle for gifts from Catania instead of Rome. The concludes the trip after a short 50 minute flight back to Catania. We had pizza for dinner and a restful evening after such a busy two days. Sorry for writting so much today but a lot happened and I could probably write more but that's alright. Goodnight! If you suffered through my grammar errors and regular English class level of education thank you!