Where in the World is Chelsea Gibbs?: When in Rome...

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Well, from what I can tell, Romans's eat, drink a lot of wine, beer and espresso, sleep in the afternoon (they don't eat dinner until at least 9PM), and chain smoke! Oh and they drive like a bat out of Hell. And they smell like BO :P ... So I think I'll do like Chelsea does instead :)

Anywhooo, today we were a little more refreshed than yesterday since we got some sleep. We went to bed last night sometime between 8-9, and then woke up around 3AM wide awake, ready to go. Our internal clocks are still functioning on American time, but they'll get used to it. We managed to go back to sleep after a couple restful hours and today the first thing we did was visit the Pantheon! It was sort of a wild goose chase to get there. We took the bus from the Colosseum (which is still amazing every time I see it) and it dropped us of in the general vicinity of the Pantheon. In Rome, all the little streets pretty much look the same. We wandered around thinking we would run into it. It's kind of hard to miss. But we didn't. We must have asked at least 6 or 7 people, who were all fairly rude and pointed in one direction or another. We finally got to a square with a hotel and basically nothing else in it, and we were pretty frustrated. Mom wanted to turn around and go back the way we came, but I said no let's just go this way, and there it was! We literally stumbled upon it.

The Pantheon is massive and ancient. It definitely stuck out among the surrounding Italian buildings. It was built in 126AD as a temple for all the gods. Since the 7th century, it's been used as a Roman Catholic Church. Inside there are a lot of really beautiful paintings and sculptures. It was filled with people while we were there today, but we were still able to see everything. Something interesting was that Raphael, the famous Renaissance artist, is buried there. After we were done looking around we went and got some gelato. I ate gelato for the first time on the steps of the Pantheon :) Pretty cool.

Next, we decided to go to an Italian Castle that someone recommended called Castel Sant'Angelo or Castle of the Holy Angel. It was supposed to be fairly close by. We took a bus and the bus driver was not very nice and wouldn't tell us where to get off. I have a few choice words for him. So we got off at a random stop, but it ended up being our lucky day and it was really close to where we needed to be. The castle wasn't like an English castle at all to me, it was very round, but still fairly medieval looking. It was built by the emperor Hadrian around 135AD for his family. Later it was used by the Pope as a fortress. It sits right next to the Tiber river. We went inside and took a lot of pictures. It was really hot. The view of Rome was nice from the top of the castle.

I was exhausted after that, so we decided to go back to the villa. To get there we thought we would just take the bus. Nope! We were going in the wrong direction, but a really nice Italian girl helped us and told us we needed to take the metro. She showed us which one to get on so we used our passes and waited for it to come. While we were waiting, we had our first encounter with gypsies. There was a woman with a baby, and some teenage looking kids standing around being really sketchy, eyeing people and talking to people when the metro doors opened. It was obvious they weren't there to actually get on a train and leave. A woman walked by me and her little girl asked who they were and I heard her mom say "They're gypsies!" While we were waiting, a man working for the metro came in and made the woman with the baby and a younger guy leave. While that was happening, a nice Italian woman came up to me and my mom and told us we needed to be careful and watch out. Kind of scary! We got on the right train and finally made it back though.

Tonight we ate dinner at a place that was supposed to be "Southern Italian" as opposed to Roman food. Italian food is okay so far. It's going to take some getting used to. It's nothing like Olive Garden, obviously. We walked down to a little square and met a couple from Georgia. It was nice to hear American voices, especially Southern ones!

Best things about today: The nice people that helped us. Seeing the Pantheon. Trying gelato; Mom really liked mango, I haven't decided yet. Not being as jet lagged.
Worst things about today: Rome is really, really beautiful, and there are so many awesome things to see, but it smells like an ash tray. People are oblivious and ignorant when you're trying to take a picture. They will stand right in front of you! I really miss my iPhone, especially when I'm lost and want to look something up!