When in Rome...

...carry AT LEAST two drink bottles!! It is stinking, horribly, unbelieveably hot. In August, anyway. It was sooooo worth it though. Rome is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Just gorgeous. I don't care where else you go in europe, GO TO ROME!!!!!!

We took the train down from Modena, a town near Giulia's village. It was a quiet journey, but I got a photo of Firenze (even if it was only the train station!) and the scenery was very pretty, which is what I've come to expect of Italy. When we got to Rome we dropped off our bags (we were staying in a monastery RIGHT in the middle, only 75 euro for two people for a night - thanks to Giulia's dad :), and headed out to the Spanish steps. The Spanish embassy is just down the road. They were great, we had lunch there, then continued on to the Piazza de Popolo, and walked along the river to the Castel and the Vatican. It was a very short queue to get inside, only about 20mins (in the hot hot sun - bearable and certainly worth it). Inside we climbed up to the cupola on top of St Peter's Basilica. The view was amazing. After that we went for coffee (I heart espresso - the energy boost has never been more needed than after a day walking around Rome in August), went back to our room, changed, and headed out for dinner.
I had pasta which my guidebook said was typical of Rome but wasn't really that different, still good though, and Giulia had a 'Forest' pizza (mushrooms and wild boar sausage or something), I tried a little and it was very tasty. Did you know in italy they serve pizza whole, you order it as a meal and you have to cut it yourself? I had one in Naples (more on that later) and could only finish half. After dinner we walked around, Rome at night is even better, see my photos...indescribable, especially the Trevi Fountain. Some italian guy there started talking to us and asked me questions that were a little too personal and I was too tired to deal with it so I walked off. Giulia was a little annoyed, apparently in italy it's normal to ask such questions, but I didn't care if I was rude to him. I did apologise to Giulia for embarrassing her though.

The next day we met up with some more italians who had been in Spain too, who live near Napoli. We spent the day in Rome together - Pantheon, Colosseum, dinner by the river, yay! It was awesome to see them again. That night we drove back to Naples. The next day we walked around - it is a lovely place! Especially because it has a waterfront! It's been a while since I've seen the open ocean!
We were near a castle and one of my italian friends, a very flamboyantly gay one, told some spanish people not to buy a street vendor's imitation designer handbags. Now, this vendor was a tall, well-built black man - NOT someone I would want to mess with, and he (understandably) got quite upset that he'd potentially lost a sale. We had to walk past him again a few minutes later and he got very aggressive, pushing my italian friend around a little, and I was a bit scared that he would hit him. His mates pulled him away though. But Giulia was quite shaken.

That night we had a bit of a party, the guy whose house we were staying at is coming back to Spain (yay!) and some more of his friends will come this time too, I met a couple of them. They seemed nice, although everybody talked in italian and after a couple of days of this I was a little bored, because I don't speak much italian. It is a nice language to listen to though.

Then the next day they dropped me off at the airport at 8am, and I flew back to Madrid. Now I'm back in the town where I'm studying and it's good to be back, even if it is 40 degrees today. Tomorrow I begin the search for a flat.
Wish me luck!