Kelly and I have just spent our third day in Rome and it has been an absolute whirlwind. I can't believe we've already been to four countries! I'm cheating a little bit because I'm counting Vatican city, but still - Switzerland, France, Italy, Vatican City...all in the past 6 days. It's shocking to write that - six days - when it feels like we've been traveling for weeks and weeks. Everything has been wonderful, but traveling is just as exhausting as I remember. I have to say that I'm looking forward to relaxing on sandy beaches in the Greek isles and not worrying about what landmark I want to see next.
One of the best things about traveling with Kelly is that her Art History/Poli Sci background give a lot of good context to the stuff we've seen. Despite years of humanties, AcDec, and random history and art classes, it seems that I've forgotten almost everything. Especially in a city as rich in culture and history as Rome, monuments get so much cooler when you actually know what the hell they are.
We're in Roma for two more days before heading to Athens and then the Greek Isles. We've already stayed in two hostels here (The Yellow and Alessandro Palace and Bar - I highly recommend the latter for better safety and newer facilities, as well as cool staff), and we're going to couchsurf for the next two nights! We're heading to our couchsurfers place tonight and I can't wait to meet him. His name is Lorenzo, he's 29, and all his recommendations make him sound awesome.
For anyone who isn't familiar with Couchsurfing (http://www.couchsurfing.org/), it's an online community of travelers around the world who offer up their couches for free for a few days for anyone who's traveling to their city. Not everyone has to offer up their couch in order to stay with someone else. I was kind of sketched out by the concept at first, but the verification and recommendations system makes it so that it's easy to see if a person is trustworthy. This will be my first time couchsurfing, but all my friends who have done it in the past have had absolutely amazing experiences. In fact, we tagged onto someone else's couchsurfing host in Rome: in the middle of climing the 330 spiral steps (yes that is as difficult as it sounds) to the top of the cupola of St. Peter's Basilica (7€ to take the elevator then walk, 5€ to do the entire thing on foot), I met a girl from Montreal who is studying in Lyon and traveling through Italy. Her name was Andrea and she's couchsurfing alone all over Italy. Girl's got balls. Either way, we decided to meet up the next night, and she invited us to a party that her couchsurfing host Domenico was attending. It ended up being a SCHOOL-SPONSORED party thrown by the college of Chemical Engineering of the University of Rome and we had a blast. In conclusion...couchsurfing rocks. Will let you all know what our experience turns out to be after we meet our host.
Alright, internet is running out at this cybercafe/laundromat (wtf is right), so until next time...Ciao!
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