Roma - Part I

Disclaimer: So I started this a while back and just never posted...there are a lot more like this, so I'm gonna go through and start posting again (even though we have been back for 3 months now!)

Back to our tour of Italia! Rome was our last stop, and by this time, Kai was pretty exhausted (So was I, but at least I stayed awake longer than he did). Within minutes of getting on the train from Florence, he was out!

After arriving, we decided to head to our hotel to drop off our stuff. I had found a deal at a 4 star hotel (Hotel Campanelle -- definitely recommend it) and since I was sick of being in cheapo hotels, I jumped at the chance. The website had advertised a shuttle service from two different metro stops, so we got off and were waiting for the shuttle (see how happy I look waiting for the shuttle? Or is it because it was warm enough for me to NOT wear my jacket?!)

Funny story about this place...Since there is a definite difference in quality between US and European hotels, I didn't know whether the shuttle was going to be a van, a car, or a bus. For whatever reason, I had my doubts, and since there were no signs noting where to wait for the hotel shuttle, I called the hotel to ask. The guy who answered just told me to wait in the front and the shuttle would be there shortly. After I hung up, I realized that there wasn't really a 'front' of the metro stop, and so I sent Kai across the street to wait, just in case. After about 10 minutes, I was worried we missed it, so I called back again and was asking the guy what kind of shuttle it was, and he was telling me, it was a shuttle. In my mind, I was thinking of some small car coming up with a paper sign on the window, as I was trying to clarify whether the shuttle was a van, or a car, he finally said, it seats 27 passengers, and then I saw it. It was a bus with HUGE lettering all down the side that said, "Hotel Campanelle". Lets just say I kind of felt like an idiot, or the guy at the hotel was thinking it!

Getting to the hotel was a pleasant surprise! It was finally what I expect from hotels! Nice bedding, balcony, clean bathroom, blah, blah, blah. Lets just say I was sooo happy to end our trip in this place.

After dropping off our stuff, we headed back out since there was a lot to see and not much time. Our first stop was the Pantheon, but on our way, we saw this little tricycle car thing! It was soooo little! Yup, there is one wheel in the front and two in the back...

The Pantheon was awesome! It was so cool to see in real life, especially since I learned about it in my freshman humanities 101 class at BYU (but don't ask me to explain what its all about...I don't remember).

After the Pantheon, we headed toward the Trevi Fountain and we ran into this huge monument (I can't remember what it is called now...its been a while). The plaza was really pretty though, it seriously felt kind of magical (especially with the guy/girl in the background)

The Trevi Fountain is seriously AMAZING! We were walking through these little streets, and then all of a sudden, you see it and it is sooo cool (not to mention packed with tourists). The pictures really don't do it justice...

We left the Trevi Fountain and walked around taking pictures with my good old Canon Powershot. This city is seriously so pretty!

The next morning, we woke up early and went onto the roof of our hotel to watch the sunrise, which to be honest, was cool, but took WAY too long, and got a little too cold. BUT, Kai made sure to document it with a picture.

After eating a delicious breakfast at the hotel (not your typical 'continental' breakfast...i'm talking meat, eggs, fresh fruit, yogurt, etc.), we headed toward the Vatican City. On our way, we ran into a lady who asked us if we wanted to bypass a 2 hour line and get into the Vatican Museum with a tour guide. I didn't know how much it would cost to get in normally, so I asked and she quoted me some prices for the Vatican Museum and the She said it was only like 7 Euro more than if you wanted to get in on your own, but for some reason, I just figured we should just stand in the line. We didn't know how much the tickets would cost, so I almost took her word. Thank goodness we didn't. The tickets were WAY cheaper that what she had said they would be, not to mention that the cost to see the Sistine Chapel is included, which she had said was not. We spent the ENTIRE afternoon there. There were so many guided tours going on that we just listened in to different tours as we went along and pretty much got the guided tour for free (yup, we are ghetto). It was pretty cool, although I will admit...I was museumed out WAY before Kai was ready to go.

Top - Left: In the Vatican Gardens / Right: Sculpture Room
Bottom - Left: The Map Hall / Right: The EXIT!!!

Once we made it out, we decided to go back into the city to see the rest of the sites...

Kai outside the city walls

So we finally made it out of the museum and made our way to St Peters Basilica where they were setting up for some big conference where the pope was going to speak. We saw lots of churches while we went around, but this one was by far the nicest. I felt really smart when I went inside and saw this sculpture, Michelangelo's 'Pieta', another thing I remembered from my Humanities 101 class my freshman year!

Michelangelo's 'Pieta'

Me in front of the Basilica

The view from the Basilica

In the main plaza, there is a huge open area and if you stand on this spot, the columns all line up so it looks like there is only one row, but really, there are multiple rows! So, if you look at the picture below, it looks like there is only 1...don't be fooled. Totally made me think of Magic Eye books from elementary!

St Peters in the background...pretty awesome!

The bridge behind me is famous..and really pretty...too bad I can't remember the name :(

There was a lot more stuff we wanted to do, but of course, time ran out...guess we'll just have to take another trip!

Part II to be posted in the near future....hopefully!

Dinner in the Dark

A few weeks back, Kai and I had signed up to feed the missionaries. At about 5:45pm, we were finishing up our preparations when the power went out. In London, the sun goes down around 4:45pm, so if the power goes out, it is dark. Anyways, the power going out isn't completely unusual for us (sadly), but its always the fuse that we just have to switch back on, and things are fixed. So I made my way over to our fuse box, but nothing worked. Kai went upstairs to see if anyone else's power was out, but of course, it was only us. We called our landlord, who said the best he could do would be to have someone come over at 8pm to look at it. Thankfully, I was actually on time making dinner (if you know me, you know I am almost ALWAYS running late :) so luckily the dinner was ready.

So 6pm came around and the missionaries showed up to our romantic dinner lit by one candle, and a laptop that was about to run out of battery. Not wanting to put them off schedule, all of us huddled around the candle and had dinner in the dark! I kept thinking that the lights would magically come on, but nothing happened except for the laptop running out of battery.

Dinner was good and the guys ate it all (thanks to Kai and the Tongan elder), but our dessert plan, which was apple struedel and ice cream, wasn't gonna happen since the power was still out. Sooo, instead, I took our toaster down the hall, plugged it into an outlet in front of one of our neighbors' doors, and made nutella toast and ice cream (yup...can you say GHETTO!!!)

Anyways, long story short, everything worked out fine. The guy who came to look at it 8pm couldn't fix it, so we had to be in the dark for the night and luckily for us, we left the next morning for Paris! That post to come :)

Barcelona

So I just realize that I never wrote about our stay in Barcelona, so here goes! Hopefully I didn't forget too much of the good stuff!

Back when we were in Spain, we spent a few days in Barcelona. We arrived in the morning, so we dropped off our stuff at our hostel, rested for a bit, and then decided to go check out this place called Montejuic, which is a huge mountain with an old castle/jail on the top. There is supposed to be a funicular that takes you to the top, so originally the plan was to take that and walk down. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't figure out where you get on the funicular and by the time we saw it, we had already walked up a little ways, so we decided to just walk up.

Here we are about a third of the way up, feeling good about our decision to hike.

It started raining shortly after we started hiking and we slowly realized that the hike was a lot longer than we had thought it would be! (P.S. - check out Kai's awesome hair -- hahahaha!)

By the time we made it to the top, it was a full on downpour. The castle was worth it though -- check out that former moat turned into garden!

Us in the center of the castle/jail.

After the castle, we walked down and checked out the Olympic Stadium (behind us). It was really cool, but kind of eery. I feel like the Olympic Stadium would be a tourist attraction, but there was NO ONE there! So, we decided to take a jumping picture (obviously one of us hasn't mastered the jump quite yet).

Also on the Olympic grounds, we found a vent that was blowing out tons of air, so Kai pulled a Marilyn Monroe.

Finally, at the bottom of the hill, we found the Museo Nacional, but of course, it was closing right as we got there, so we didn't actually go inside (not to mention, I don't think we looked very good after hiking in the rain).

Check out the view of Barcelona from the Museum! It was seriously amazing!

Kai loved this sign -- not exactly positive what it meant...maybe something like, 'Don't swim in the fountain or you will get electricuted?'

The view of the Museum from the bottom -- amazing!

We both had to take pictures in front of the Magical fountain, which was pretty magical.

And then we took some more pictures when the little light/water show came on (now you can see the effects the rain had on my mascara!)

Kai wanted to show off his muscles by picking me up...noticed the stressed smile on his face ;)

From the Museo, we rode the metro back to where our hostel was and had dinner at Somys, which was good, but the highlight of the night was getting gelato at this little shop!

The next morning, we headed into the city center to check out La Rambla, this big open market they have. On the walk down, they have all these famous houses that we didn't go to because it was expensive and the lines were super long! Instead, when it started POURING, we decided to stop and have tapas and Paella :)

Then we got to Placa de Catalunya where there were millions of pidgeons! Honestly, I do not like pidgeons at all. They are sooo annoying and gross, especially when they are in huge groups. The guy on the left was just feeding these things and they would land all over him! It was nasty, trust me.

Bet you didn't know Marilyn Monroe is now in Barcelona?!?

Possibly my favorite place in Barcelona -- the sweet shop (I don't even remember their name). We walked in and this guy gave us a sample cookie, which was DELICIOUS! He totally got me hooked, so I convinced Kai that we needed to get some. Of course, with all the varieties they had, we ended up with lots of cookies, which were NOT cheap, but soo I was hooked. Even after the shock of realizing that we were paying like 25 USD for 5 small cookies, I still made Kai go back there before the end of our trip so I could get more :)

After getting our cookies, we went to this park (can't remember the name) and hung out for a little bit.

The fountain was soooo pretty and they were getting ready for some event because they had speakers set up and kept testing the sound. Aaandd...as a side note, there are stairs that go up each side and that meet at the top below the arch. Kai thought he was faster than me, so we had a race to the top, and guess who won?! Yup, thats right...ME!

After that, we went to the Arco de....something...I left our tour book at our hostel when we left Barcelona since I figured it would go to better use there...the only thing is now I don't remember what the places were called! Oh well.

The next day, it was sunny (huge change from our first few days), so we decided to take a trip to the Mediterranean Sea! It was really pretty, but the water was a little too cold for me, so Kai went swimming on his own while I laid out. Did I mention that it was also a topless beach? Yup, old women everywhere with no tops. It was a little disturbing, but the most disturbing? As we were leaving, there was this old man walking down the beach completely naked! Seriously, no shame, just taking a stroll. It was hilarious!

On the boardwalk, they have all these workout contraptions, so of course, we had to test them out.

Then we stopped and had more tapas (Kai's favorite -- NOT!).

Luckily, he was a lot happier when we got ice cream afterward!

From the beach, we went to La Sagrada Familia -- this amazing cathedral that was designed by Gaudi. It was seriously sooo cool. I would give you lots of facts, but to be honest, you really just need to experience this place.

The front entrance to the church...

Kai with his trusty audioguide inside the church...

Some of the architecture inside the church...

And us at the top of the church!!! You had to pay 2 euro/person to ride an elevator up, but it was sooo worth it! You could see everywhere in Barcelona!

We walked down and got a cool picture of one of the Jesus sculptures looking out over Barcelona.

The stairs were like this all the way down!!!

Our last day, we hit up La Rambla again (to get more cookies)

Went to their cathedral, which was really cool inside.

Here is Kai in front of the cathedral.

And of course, right next to the cathedral, you have a porter potty, and urinals. No doors, no screens, just urinals in the middle of the plaza!

Then we went to Parc Guell, to see Gaudi's house (which if you ever go to Barcelona, we wouldn't really recommend. It was not worth the money at all)

But the park itself was sooo cool! Tons of cool stuff to see!

Overlooking the entrance to the Parc...

Sitting in the plaza with all the mosaic benches

Under one of his archway passages.

Kai posing under this overhang with huge pillars!

And finally, me in my awesome outfit (I was out of clothes and was going for comfort!) in the front of the park.

That night, we hopped on a night train back to Madrid. Kai looks happy here, but shortly after we took this picture, we realized that we had gotten bed bugs from the train! Here is what happened...our car was full of people (who all spoke spanish). I had thought I felt something on my arm, but figured it was just a piece of hair or something. Anyways, a short time into the trip, the two women sitting next to Kai and I got up and left. We saw them talking with the conductor, and then they never came back. Looking back on it, they must have realized it too and left us to be eaten! Shockingly, we didn't get bitten at all, but we had to go to the laundromat to wash all of our stuff! 20 euro later, we were bug free, but still definitely annoyed. Needless to say, I am not a fan of Spain overnight trains!