Postius I might actually be Deadius (aka Postius about Romius 2)

Reasons I might actually be deadius; I haven't blogged in so long it's a reasonable conclusion or if I don't blog soon my parents might actually kill me.

Our second day in Rome we headed to the Vatican and Basilica di San
Pietro. Now Rome has an extensive train/metro system, it's made up of
two metro lines in a vaguely cross shape and then seven train lines,
the whole thing on a map looks kinda like this:

Vatican City is sort of below, between orange metro stops Cipro and
Ottaviano-S.Pietro. I have no idea where we got off but we did lots of
walking to get there. And it was very hot. And we were wearing
Pope-worthy covering clothes (or for those of us who weren't; carrying shawls). When we finally arrived (by way of
someone other than Manny navigating) we then had the debate of who
wanted to go where; a few of the girls had already been to the
Basilica or the Vatican Museum so all of us going to one was going to
be boring for someone. In the end most of us ended up deciding to go
to the Basilica leaving Manny and a few others to go to the museum or
shop until we were finished. Going to visit Basilica di San Pietro on
a Sunday; not advisable. Entry is however free on Sundays, this could
possibly be why the crowd was off the hook, but that could also have
been because we were in Pope-ville, on a Sunday. This is what Piazza
San Pietro looks like:

this lovely image is from GoogleMaps

Now imagine the whole thing as a watch face so I can explain how busy
it was. Entry is at about 11 o'clock, you can see the little rat-race
thing there, and 6-8 was under construction or getting painted or
something so it was all blocked off. The line started at the rat-race,
went clockwise until it reached 6 o'clock and them doubled back to
about 5 o'clock, that's where we got in it. It's safe to say we got to
know each other quite well while we were in at line, in the middle of
the day, with little shade.

Malin, Mollie & Chloe

Mollie

Mollie, Maria, Elina

Ellie, Malin, Tash, Elina, Mollie, Chloe

By the time the we'd got to 6 o'clock and then all the way back to 4
o'clock we'd been in the line for 40/45 minutes. At this point the
Pope appeared. Well in theory it was the Pope, a window opened in the
top of a building and a little red carpet was draped out it and then
an old man appeared and started talking. It was actually rather
impressive he talked in Italian, French, German and English but I'm
not sure what else. It could have been a puppet or a stunt double, but
it was probably the Pope. A fantastic thing happened while the Pope
was talking (which he did for quite a while). A whole bunch of people
in the line decided that they'd be better able to hear him if they
stood in the middle of the Piazza, this in fact is probably not true
as there where speakers all the way around but anyway, and just
abandoned waiting. This means that when it hit an hour of us being in
line we were well around and just a little shy of reaching 12.

Pope

When you get to the edge of the rat-race it's a little deceiving; you
think you're almost through, when in actual fact it just fills up with
people and smooshes you together like sardines. There is actually one
good thing about this, it means that you can duck into the shade of
other people's umbrellas while you wait. Once you've gone through
airport style security it thins out quite a bit and you're free to
wander around the the Basilica. It's really rather huge, but
personally I didn't think it was that impressive (other than the
size).

Obligatory 'I'm in the Basilica' photo

After we'd had a good look around it was getting close to the
time we were supposed to meet up with the others so we had a decision
to make; postpone meet up and wait in another (seemingly unmoving
line) to go to the top of the Basilica or trudge off to find water,
the others and food. There was only me and one other girl who really
wanted to go to the top, and the rest refused to stand in line any
more, wanting to sit down and eat rather than wait an extra hour and
be able to say they looked down on Rome from the top of the Pope's
Basilica. So we headed out. Into a practically empty piazza. Moral of
the story; if you want to visit the Basilica, go at 1pm (and don't
chicken out of going to the top just because you're tired).
After we'd refuelled and had another lengthy discussion about where we
would go next we headed off to find Trevi Fountain (deciding not to go
to the Vatican Museum because we didn't have time to look at it all
before it closed). Somehow we though it was a good idea to walk there,
but it really wasn't. It's only 2.5km and straight most of the way but
somehow we managed to get very lost and despite the fact Manny kept
asking for directions (from shop owners) we ended up having to back
track quite a bit. We eventually fount it, did the obligatory money
throwing and picture taking before getting gelato and heading off back
to to hotel nap, and get ready to go back into central Rome for
dinner.

I've now also added the photos to 'Postius about Romius 1'

Postius about Romeius 1

I'm currently sitting in the airport at Paris on the way home from FPS in America and BOY has it been a long time since I’ve written a blog! I’m very sorry I’ve just been so busy and so tired I just haven't gotten a chance before now.

Right so now we go back 2 ½ weeks to May 28^th, the day I headed to Rome with Chloe. We had tickets on the frecciarossa, a fast train that, that meant it would only take us 4 ½ hours instead of 9+. The train was leaving at 8.25 and then Corrado was on a 9 o'clock train to Venice so Sara said she would drive us to the Lingotto metro station and then Corrado would metro with us to Porta Nuova and make sure we got on the train ok. Designated leaving from house time was 7.45. At this time, and In fact at even 5 to 8 Sara was washing the dishes from breakfast while Chloe, Corrado and I were hovering on the doorstep. It turns out that Sara thought our train left at 8.45 and so was in no rush for us to leave. Once Corrado corrected her we drove slalom style to the metro stop, ran down the steps and made it onto a metro that left just after. Then, when we got to Porta Nuova we had to go up from the metro stop to the train station above, normally there is and escalator/staris from the inside of one to the other. However when we legged it up a massive flight of stairs it was to find that these were closed and thus we had to leg it up another set of stairs before running through the station, finding our platform and then running down that until dudes started blowing whistles at which point Corrado stuffed us on the train and said we'd have to find our carriage from in there. It was a very exciting and overly stressful start to the weekend.

By the time we managed to find out seats I had a dry rattly cough and wheezed if I breathed to deeply, I believe my comment to Chloe at the time was “I'm never running again in my life” her response was “would you like to use my asthma puffer” followed by “at least you wore your hiking boots not flats”. We swapped seats with a family of three so they could sit in the group of four chairs together while we sat in a 2 and didn't have to worry about annoying anyone else. The trip to Rome was rather uneventful; Chloe and I chatted for a while before she settled down to sudoku and I started studying 'emergency planning' for FPS. The only other vaguely interesting thing I can remember is when we got to Florence Chloe decided she wanted to get off the train and stalk the cast of 'Jersey Shore' I told her that was a stupid idea and I was in the isle seat so she couldn't really get up anyway.

When we arrived at the train station in Rome we discovered that neither of us actually had a phone number for Manuella, the lady from Mondo Insieme (my Italian exchange company) who was taking us around Rome. And now, before anyone starts raving about the lack of organisation or back up plans or anything; Chloe had the number on her phone or one of her SIMs (she has two, both Italian but one with better rates for calling overseas). When we checked through her phone and both the SIMs to get the number it had some how managed to get lost so we were numberless. We headed to the platform we remembered some information we revived telling us to wait but couldn't find Manuella or any other exchange looking students. In the end I texted Sara who had Sele text me the number. When we finally got hold of Manuella it turns out she was waiting two platforms down from where we were at 12 not 10 (I’m still very sure the information said 10, especially as some of the others got lost too).

We had a little wait in the station while we waited for everyone to arrive from their various locations. In the end we had Me and Chloe from Torino, Tash from Vasto (on the opposite coast from Rome), Mollie and Ellie (two Kiwis) from Naples (or just outside), Marlin and Karoline (Swedish and Norwegian) from Sicily and Helene (another Norwegian), Elina and Maria (both Finnish) from I can't remember where. And of course Manny, how we arrived at this nick name is a story I shall tell later.

The hotel we were staying wasn't actually in the center of Rome but was a little way out (I’ve no idea if it was in fact technically in Rome, it appears that were we'd say something was in another suburb they say its the next town). To get there we had to metro and then get off and walk a little way to a train stop and get on a train and THEN walk for about 5 mins to get to the hotel, all with our bags, oh yes! And also with Manny, who has a rather.....lacking sense of direction, leading us. We ended up spending rather a while sitting in the train station, while we waited for a train that stopped where we needed to go, this wasn't really the end of the world because we just spent the whole time chatting and getting to know each other which was really great.

On the outside our hotel looked like a total dump, faded paint and water stains and so everyone was grumbling that Manny was useless (this also has to do with the fact that several of the trains we didn't get on because they 'didn't stop at our station' did in fact stop at our stop). Inside however the hotel was perfectly fine, the rooms were small but really, why do you need to have a big luxurious room? We're in Rome to do Rome things and explore Rome, not live in the hotel room. We dumped our stuff, spent a while just chilling and then headed back into Rome for a mini exploration then dinner. 3 min walk, traffic light, 3 second walk, traffic light, 2 second walk, traffic light, 2 min walk, 10 second stair descension, and that's just to get to the platform for the train. Right so get on the train, for.... I’m not really sure how long, it was long enough that we wanted to get a seat but we always seemed to almost miss it so it can't have been too long... then for the trek from the train platform to the metro there were about 5 stair cases/ escalators you had to go down then a 2min walk to the metro entrance and then another 3 sets of stairs to get to the right platform. Yeah Rome real organised!

We headed into Piazza di Spagna where there is a huge set of stairs that lead up to a church at the top. Unfortunately dusk/sunset isn't the best time to visit here if you want to take pretty pictures, and there were LOADS of people, but here's a picture anyway:

We then went on a bit of a walk to have a look at things, Manny wouldn't let us into any shops which was amusing for me and annoying for most of the others. Right so Manny; she's quite petite (as in she's shorter than me) she always wore elegant cloths, at night she always wore heels (as in stilettos) even when we had planned extensive cobblestoned walks and she was always telling us to act like 'laaaaaaidies'; 'oh no girls don't do that, it's not ladylike, if you don't act like a lady no man will be interested in you'. Yeah we found this absolutely hilarious and tried to do as many unladylike things as possible, then when she went to tell someone they weren't acting like a lady we'd jump in with 'laaaaaaaaidy' (if you've seen Little Brittan you'll understand).

We eventually found a pizza joint to eat at, but as you can imagine walking into a small pizzeria, in a popular tourist destination, at a peak eating hour with eleven people it's kinda difficult to seat you all together. So we ended up with two tables about as far apart as was physically possible. We were supposed to be mingling but we didn't do a very good job deviding for tables, I ended up with the two Finns, a Norwegian and Manny near the door and everyone else was over in the opposite corner. After we'd finished eating and done some (not very) complicated math to split the bill we headed off to another near by piazza. I actually have absolutely no idea the name of the piazza we were in but there was a pointy monument thing and castleyish building behind it, I’ll get back to you. Put 10 teenagers in a relatively unpopulated piazza towards the end of the night and silly photo teimz ensue:

Maria, Helene, Karoline & Malin

Manny & Chloe

Malin, Ellie & Natasha

Mollie & Chloe

Manny, Chloe, Mollie & Ellie

So obviously I’m not in the airport at Paris any more, I’ve actually been back for two weeks, oops! More of an explanation about how I’ve been 'using' my time will come in a later post. Also keep an eye out for more about Rome, we did SO much there is no way I could get it into one reasonable sized post so you can have several. Hopefully the rest will follow in the next few days.

(mum has alerted me to a possible reason for my blogger not working at night as an issue with blogger not functioning well with Google Chrome which is the internet browser I use, thus tonight I am running a competition between GC and Internet Explorer to see which will function/let me upload first. If I am still having some issues, please check back tomorrow or later today for any images that don’t upload tonight)