Day 5

Jenna:
Day 5 was Sunday, the day that we learned a great lesson. Great Lesson Learned in Rome is "Always Prepare for Church". We woke up at about 9 AM after getting to bed at 4 AM the night before, and sadly realized that we wouldn't be able to make it to church. We had to check out of our hotel, find and check into the new hotel all before 11, and the latest church time was 11:20. A taxi would cost somewhere around $200 and we would need to budget about 45 minutes to get there by train. We were pretty bummed to realize our mistake, and I think both of us will be more vigilant about planning out how to get to church when in a foreign country ahead of time.

Sunday was definitely the day that we did the least, taking it easy and just relaxing. We checked into our new hotel, a little family owned place with a lot of character, but not a lot of room. This place is really tiny, but we are only here for three nights. We decided to try out the metro for the first time, using the passes we received when we bought our "Roma" pass. Other than getting on the train going in the wrong direction the first time, it went pretty well. I really enjoyed watching the little cartoons cautioning travelers to be aware of pickpockets. The escalator you ride up and down from the station to the shuttle is so long it makes me a little sick to look down when I was at the top. The metro itself actually feels relatively clean, with these fun bright orange seats.

We went to this little outdoor market with all kinds of antique sellers. Some of them looking genuine, and some of them looking a little bit fake. The prices on some were really great, but most seemed to be charging ridiculous amounts for their wares. Like the very used looking Louis Vutton backpack my Mom picked up with a quoted price of 200 Euros. That's $300 in America. We put it right back as soon as we heard that price. We stopped by the booth of some friends we had made, filled with all kinds of great antique stuff. Real antiques, not things that looked like they just found in a dumpster like some other vendors.

We left the market so hungry, and ended up finding this great little pasticceria where we got little finger food like chickpea salad, croissant sandwiches, caviar and crab rolls, a marinara mozzarella rice ball concoction, and this fruit bowl that we couldn't finish off fast enough. A pasticceria is really a pastry shop, so of course we had to get some little cookies and treats to go along with our gelato. The gelato was the cutest gelato I have ever seen, with little rosettes on top of each flavor. The cookies we bought were delicious as well.

We rode the metro back to the hotel and both ended up falling asleep. Who knew that being on vacation could wear you out so quickly?