Sunday, June 06, 2010

Rome, Day 1

We left Paris well before the sun arose, catching a 7am flight to Rome. Our hope was that this would give us the best chance of actually USING our travel day, rather than it being a wasted day.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful--we were on easyJet, which has no assigned seats, a la Southwest Airlines. We managed to get two aisle seats near the front of the plane, me sitting just in front of Ethan. I snoozed off a bit as the flight took off....but let's just say that one of us developed some sort of a bug or food poisoning or something and spent a significant amount of time in the teeny airplane bathroom educating themself on the best way to vomit into a teeny toilet when there is no space to kneel down nearer to it. Really, really sucked. I have never seen someone look so gray and pasty. The flight crew brought him some water, but there wasn't really much to be done. He toughed it out, and was totally wiped out once we landed.

After collecting our luggage, we headed over to a shuttle bus (I purchased tickets while we were on the plane, to avoid some hassle once we landed), and had a ~45 minute ride to Termini train station, a few blocks away from our hotel.

We crossed our fingers in hope that we would be able to check into our room early (like 5 hours early....), but it was not to be. So we dropped off our non-camera/computer luggage, and did some slow rambling. We will not discuss the meal we ate. We have decided to wipe it's unappetizingness from our consciousness and enjoy every other meal we had in Europe that was delicious. That bad. Literally bad. Bland. And cold. And obviously sitting under a heat lamp for an extended period of time. And this was AFTER I asked the server for his suggestion on what was best. Awful.

Anyway. We decided to get *something* out of our first day, so we walked a couple blocks to the nearby Church of Santa maria degli Angeli, within the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian. These baths were so enormous that several thousand people could bathe at one time. There were separate areas for men and women, and this was a major amusement for the working class and the elite as well. A place to forget about your troubles and enjoy hanging out with your neighbors.

From the outside, you would never suspect that there is a gorgeous, enormous church inside. We walked through the rough stone entrance......into a huge chamber, softly lit with light coming through stained glass windows high above. There were very few modern lights added, which kept things a little dim. Oh, so beautiful.



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