When in Rome

...eat obscene amounts of pasta. Also explore, marvel at the rich history, and accept your sore and rain-soaked feet. At least that's what I've been up to so far.

It's been wonderful to get away from freezing France; aside from today's exceedingly rainy afternoon that's given me time to update my blog (long overdue, I know), we've had nice enough weather. Most days have been at least a little overcast, but that's what you get for coming on the off-season. It's actually hard to believe I've already been here five days... I'll try to do a more in-depth blog later, but so far here's what we've done:

Monday: Solo day before my friends arrived. I had spent the night before in the Lyon airport to make my 7:00am flight and thus hadn't really slept, but my hostel was nice enough to let me shower and leave my bags there even before I'd technically checked in. Lacking a solid itinerary, I walked around and tried to orient myself in Rome. Took the above picture, since the weather was more or less cooperating! I stumbled across a Vincent van Gogh exhibit at the Museo Vittoriano and decided to spring the 8 € to go in. The exhibit was entirely in Italian, which made it hard to fully appreciate, but they did have some cool paintings.

Walking around Rome by myself, I couldn't help feeling that this isn't a city especially geared towards solo travelers. Not that it's unsafe; it just feels more lonely to be by yourself here than in Paris and other cities I've visited. Perhaps it's the nature of the giant tour groups you see walking around, combined with Italy's seemingly family and couple-focused culture. Italian waiters and other people I interacted with seemed to be much more judgmental of my eating dinner and roaming around by myself than Parisians were. Who knows!

As far as food goes, knowing that my friends probably wanted to stick to a pure Italian food agenda, I tried an Italian Chinese (Cinese, in Italian) restaurant to finally assuage my dire, life threatening craving for wonton soup. More garlic than I'm used to (it is Italy, after all), but still delicious!

Tuesday: Vanessa and Steph arrive (they also had a red-eye flight), so I met them at a different hostel near the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore. It turned out to be more of a B&B whose host only speaks Italian and Russian, but we've been able to understand each other reasonably well. We visited the Caracalla Thermal Baths, which are huge and ancient and awesome (as is everything in this city). Not only were they baths, they were also a sports complex and marketplace that covered several acres. We also tracked down the church that houses the Bocca della Verita (below), a giant stone face whose mouth will supposedly cut off your hand if you tell a lie in front of it. then headed to the Piazza Navona to check out Rome's Christmas market, which was surprisingly un-Christmasey. France's Christmas markets had this one beat!

Wow, I did not make it far in this entry, but it's time for Christmas Eve pizza dinner and then seeing the Pope on a jumbotron for Midnight Mass! It's the first time I've been to a midnight mass, so even if it's in Latin or Italian or any other language I don't understand, I'm looking forward to it. Merry Christmas to all!