Ruin Cities

In the past two days we tackled two cities of ruins, Rome and Athens. Yes we were rather turbo to take them both on in such a short period of time, but it worked out and was fun.

We left the farm early Thursday morning and took the hour and a half train to Rome. Jorie's roommate, who studied abroad in Rome, mapped out a walking route to take us by all the big must-see places in one afternoon, and this was key to our efficiency (thank you Matt). We started by fueling ourselves at a hole in the wall pizza place- it was delicious. We started our walk at the Colosseum. It was very impressive to see, and it looked just like the pictures... Old, massive and a little decrepit. We walked up to Venezia Plaza (a massive building with statues and guards), then to Argentina Plaza (in the center of the plaza is the Cat Sanctuary with tons of ruins), then to Navona Plaza (a beautiful plaza with a big fountain and statues as the focal point) and then to the Pantheon Plaza. The Pantheon was extremely impressive, it's almost 2000 years old and so well preserved. It was mind blowing to stand inside and to think of people building the massive stone gorgeous building just after Christ. While we were wandering through the crowds of people, I found myself recognizing a familiar face... I was in utter shock to see Dick, our camp handy man, standing at one of the oldest buildings in the world with us. It was so out of context, by the time I register to say hello the crowd had already separated us.
Anyways, we continued wandering through all the shops and fun streets until we reached the Vatican. We pulled out our scarves and covered up to see the Catholic Mecca, St. Peter's Cathedral. The church was massive and decadent. In my mind one of the most impressive things is that what looks to be tons of paintings on the walls and ceiling are actually mosaics. In the 1700's all the painting were transformed into mosaics. The idea of the billions of little pieces boggles my mind.

After a meal deal dinner (good for the money but nothing compared to Kirstie's home cooking) and some gelato, we headed to Trevi Fountain. There were so many people gathered around the beautifully lite up masterpiece. Seeing it at night made it even more impressive.

After feeling as though we had seen all we could see of Rome in one day we headed to the airport... This is where the adventure really begins... And this is also why you travel when you are young. So hostels were looking rather pricey and we were concerned about getting a train to the airport at 3:30am to catch our flight. Being the problem solvers we are, we decided the best plan would be to sleep at the airport. I did some research on the airport and believe it or not I found a website called Isleepinairports.com. Yes it is possible to find just about everything on the web including all the info you want to know about sleeping in an airport. Anyways, the airport did not have as many options of where to sleep as we had imagined. We both have always slept in airports with carpet or padded chairs, but the Rome airport doesn't have either. So we found 4 big plants blocking off a little corner. We each made ourselves a little bed the concrete floor. The floor, as I am sure you can imagine, was hard and cold (the cold factor was the worst part because by the time we woke up we were frozen). We got very little sleep but it was worth it to save the money for one night.

Our flight to Athens was a much more comfortable sleeping environment.

We started out experiencing Athens by having a tasty Gyro for lunch. We took one of my tennis players advise and decided to see Athens via a Segway. We took the Segways for a two hour tour all around the Acropolis, and it was a much faster way to cover a lot of territory and it was so fun. I loved exploring the old world ruins on the new world hi-tech form of transportation, the contrast was amazing. Our tour guide Pluto wa also very helpful and attempted to educate us on the history with his thick Greek accent. Jorie did have one incident where the Segway had a mind of it's own and ran her off the road causing her to fall off- I found it hysterical. I would recommend the Segway Tour to everyone who visits Athens, it's awesome.
We hiked back up to the Parthanon after the tour. It was amazing to see the structures which have been there since 5 centuries before Christ. The views from the top were also impressive, Athens sprawls for miles.

We went back to the shopping areas Pluto had showed us and enjoyed ducking in and out of the much cheaper (than any where else we have been) shops.

We had an amazing Greek dinner of salad and gyros. And then topped it of with Greek yogurt.

It was great to go back to a hostel with beds that were warmer and more comfortable than the concrete floor of Rome's airport.

Now we are off to the Greek islands, first stop Mykonos!