503 Crew

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  Rome, Lazio, Italy
Tuesday, October 21, 2008

So its been awhile since I've had some good internets and time to make an entry. I'm sorry. I have not been kidnapped.

Florence was an amazingly fantastic city. The Duomo was amazing of course. It's a massive church in the center of Florence, covered in a white and green marble facade, with a massive dome and a massive tower accompanying it. The inside of the church was alright, very plain, except for the painting on the dome. It was a pretty impressive painting with the very top being painted in such a way that it creates a 3d illusion of men climbing straight down from the top of the dome. The bottom of the painting had a gruesome depiction of hell.

For 6 euro you can make a climb to the top of the dome. I went up and there was a beautiful 360° view of Florence, really worth the money. The climb up was very interesting too, you had to go through narrow passages and climb loads of stairwells, and it was very crowded because there were a lot of tourists.

I also went to two museums in Florence, The Uffizio and The Academia. Both had incredibly large collections of Renaissance art (obviously) and both were very cool. The Academia housed the original Statue of David, sculpted by Michelangelo. It was definitely the best piece of renaissance art that I saw, perfect in its depiction of human anatomy.

In Florence, I met up with my friend Carolyn, who is studying there for a semester. We made the journey to Piazza Michelangelo, a large Piazza that is located up on the hill on the outskirts of the city. It had a spectacular view of the entire city, definitely worth the hike up there. Although there were a decent amount of tourists, if you just make a small walk to a nearby church (I forget the name of it) there aren't as many tourists and the view is still great.

In Florence, I stayed at the Soggiorno Primavera, a very nice hostel located near the train station. I liked everything about the hostel except for the mosquitos in my room. There were a few, and I got lots of bites on my hands and neck. But the bathrooms were nice and clean, and the bedsheets were clean as well.

I booked a four bed dorm room, and for the first two nights no one else came and I had the room to myself. On the third night, I came home and there were four people sleeping in the room. The hostel owner had squeezed in another bed, and four people from Emerson College who were doing some traveling were staying in the room with me. They were studying abroad in the Netherlands and had ten travel days, so they went to Croatia and Italy. They were nice people, and we hung out the next night.

So after spending some good time in Florence, I made my way to Roma.

Rome turned out to be one of the best cities that I've been to so far. I only spent three nights there, but they were jam packed with sight seeing. When I got there, I checked into my hostel (Hostel del Artists) which was very near the Termini, the main train station and the central hub of Rome (All roads lead to Rome, and in Rome all roads lead to Termini).

So the first thing I did was take a trip out to see the Pantheon. It was impressive from the outside, but I couldn't go inside because there was a mass going on and I had to wait until 6. So I decided to take a walk, and I found this little area full of the ancient remains of four Roman temples. The temples were probably about 20 feet below the modern day ground level of Rome, pretty cool to think of how much the city has grown in the last 2000 years. The temple area was off limits to tourists because it was the home of a kitten commune for hippy kitties. They had a pretty nice place to stay, full of fallen columns to walk on and lots of rocks and things to play on. There were lots of little areas where you couldn't see from up on the street, and I bet thats where they had their secret catnip gardens.

So then I walked to this enormous monument for Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of a united Italy. It was by far the largest monument I have ever seen, but I didn't spend much time there because I wanted to get back to the Pantheon. The inside of the Pantheon is pretty cool. The dome is magnificent. The building itself is over 2000 years old, and architects still don't have a clear idea of how they constructed the dome.

So I went back to the hostel and met my first roommate, a South Korean named Jung (or Mr. Jung as he introduces himself). Jung was a very strange character. He was very very friendly and loved to take pictures of everything he saw and then have someone else take a picture of him in front of everything he saw. And everytime someone took a picture of him, he would pose in this pretty hilarious fashion, giving a very good "I'm so cool" look. So Jung and I walked and saw the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. They were very cool and beautiful and loaded with tourists. The next day we went and did ancient Rome together, seeing the Roman Forums, Palatine Hill, and then the Colloseum. It was very cool and old.

When we went back to the hostel we found that some more people had joined our room. Natalie and her boyfriend (I cannot remember his name, it's very french) who were from Quebec, and Horacio from Chile. We all chatted and then went to the rooftop terrace to sit around and talk. Then Natalie's boyfriend went down to the room for a minute and came back saying that someone else had come. It turned out to be a man from Austria named Rainer. So up on the rooftop terrace sat Natalie, her boyfriend, Horacio, Jung, Rainer, and I, all from room 503. Natalie's boyfriend began calling us the 503 Crew and it was pretty funny.

Horacio is 30 years old and he was in the midst of a year long trip around the world. He had quit his job as an engineer and sold his car to take this trip, going from Europe to India to Southeast Asia to Australia and then back home. He was already four months into his journey, and things were going pretty smoothly. What's cool is that he might be in Thailand the same time I'm in Thailand, so maybe we'll meet up. He had done a lot of his journey with couchsurfing, so he had to leave the next morning to meet up with his couchsurfing host.

So the next morning, all of us minus Horacio got up and went to the Vatican. We went to the Sistine Chapel first, and got in without waiting in any line which was nice. Then we went through the complex maze of rooms in the museum to get to the Sistine Chapel. The museum had the most art I have ever seen in such a small amount of space. The walls and ceilings are line with thousands of pieces that date back hundreds of years, all with religious meaning to them. Just the amount of artwork, as well as the ornateness of all the rooms and such was pretty amazing. Finally we found ourselves in the Sistine Chapel where you can't make noise and you can't take pictures. The security was extremely strict and would yell at anyone who broke the rules.

In the back of the chapel there are two exits. One is for the
tourists, and one is for the guided tours. The tourist one is on the
left, and the guided tours one is on the right. The tourist one (from what I
understand) goes outside and then you have to wait in line to get into St.
Peter's Basillica. The right door goes right into the Basillica. So we snuck
into the right one and skipped the line, which was a good idea because the line
was HUGE. It wasn't even a ticket line, it was a security checkpoint line, and we had already gone through security when we went into the Sistine Chapel and they had confiscated all my bombs and knives and my 9.

So the Basillica of St. Peter was by far the largest church I have ever been in, and was just unbelievable in the amount of sheer wealth that the place displays. Massive marble columns and statues were everywhere, and there was a huge altar with four spiraling pillars in the center of St. Peter's grave. It was both awe inspiring and nauseating at the same time. Everything was so amazing and beautiful and so unneccessary.

So we went through the Basillica, and then Rainer had to leave to catch his flight back to Austria where he works for the Austrian government in there refugee division. So Natalie, her boyfriend, Jung and I went and got some food and then met up with Horacio again at the Pantheon. We then made our way back to the hostel and hung out on the rooftop terrace and went to bed.

Today, I got up, said my goodbyes, and left for Napoli, and city that is under the control of the mafia and just two weeks ago was experiencing riots in some parts of the city. It was great meeting those people from the hostel. Natalie, her boyfriend, and Horacio were planning on going to Florence for a week, and because I have time I plan on going back to Florence to hopefully meet up with them again!

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