Sightseeing in Rome

The hole at the top of the dome of the Pantheon. I love the idea of the nondenominational worship building.

Our next stop was the Pantheon, which is one of Charissa's favorite buildings in Rome. It was built as a non-denominational temple; a place meant for all religions to be able to worship freely. But, the church had come in and kind of made it their own. The Pantheon had once been coated in gold as well, but all the gold was stripped from the building long ago. I thought the Pantheon was really, really cool, although I don't think I was quite as taken with it as Charissa was. She told me how the dome is just a free-standing concrete dome. It had to be made in pieces, but it was put together without any metal frameworks or anything. The dome's open at the top, letting sunlight spill in and light up the center of the Pantheon. I thought there would be glass or something over the top, but Charissa said that's not the case; the first time she visited, it had just rained, and there was a puddle of water in the center, roped off so that people wouldn't slip.

The gorgeously carved Trevi Fountain--which apparently
earns the city of Rome about 3000 euro every day.

Very near to the Pantheon was Trevi Fountain, the one where visitors always throw a coin over their shoulder into the fountain, and supposedly that guarantees that you'll someday return to the city (I certainly hope so!). The crowd around the fountain was just as bad as you'd expect from such a famous site—I gave Charissa my camera and wormed my way through the crowd to the edge of the fountain. It took a minute to find a spot where I could sit on the fountain and throw my coin, but I did. I tossed my coin, and Charissa took a few pictures for me. The Trevi Fountain was definitely a place that I never could have imagined I'd be able to visit—so much of Rome felt almost like a dream, it was just so surreal to actually be there.

Our last tourist stop of the day was at the Spanish Steps. These we kind of came across almost by accident while we were walking through the city after visiting the fountain. I'd heard of the Spanish Steps, although it's not something that immediately pops to mind when I think of Rome. Apparently its the one place in Rome where you can always find people hanging out, and tourists stop there all the time. Again, I took some pictures, and we continued on our way.

Me tossing my coin into Trevi Fountain.

After visiting the steps, we headed back towards our hostel. Charissa's friends were coming into Rome for the night, so we were going to go back to the hostel, change into nicer clothes for the night, and then go to the train station to meet them. Once back at the laundromat where we'd left our bags, we got the keys to the hostel—we hadn't been able to check in when we'd gotten there that morning, but know we could get settled into the room. The guy who worked at the laundromat got us our bags, and then we left the laundromat, went halfway down the street to an apartment building, and found our hostel on the third floor. Online, the hostel was called Nice Place Hostel, but the name of hostel on the door was Sweet Place. Charissa and I laughed about that—it sounded like a name that they would have chosen after hearing an English speaker say that something was “sweet!”

I was just glad we were finally checked into the hostel. I'd never stayed at a hostel that was run through a laundromat, and I was seriously creeped out—again, I'm so glad Charissa was with me, or I would've thought I was done for. There was another girl that was in our hostel room as well, and she was from the US as well. We talked for a bit, and then Charissa and I went to go grab dinner before her friends arrived. We ended up just going straight to the train station and eating at a restaurant there. I had pasta—another meal that I figured I had to have at some point while visiting Italy. For a train station cafeteria, it was decent pasta.

The (very crowded) Spanish Steps.

After a little bit of waiting, Charissa's friends arrived. There were four of them, and our group of six went to go find somewhere to spend the night. We headed to a hotel on the other side of town to meet a friend of Charissa's friend to join them in a pub crawl. We did find his friend, but they wanted to take taxis, and we preferred the metro, so we split up, and never actually found them again. Charissa's friends wanted to find something to eat, so we wandered around by the Spanish Steps and ended up at Burger King (it was either that or McDonald's, pretty much). Ironically, the 'french' fries in Italy were better than any I'd had in France yet.

 Finally, Charissa and I split from her friends and headed back to the hostel. I was tired from the overnight train and a full day of touring the city, and her friends were spending the whole night in Rome before returning to the city where they were studying. So Charissa and I headed back to our shady little hostel, where I passed out almost as soon as I'd laid down.