Bellissimo Roma!!!

After a sleep in and very close call, i sprinted and made it onto the rome bus and saw the familiar faces of Alex, Lucy and Megan,  who i soon found out were all staying at the yellow hostel with me, friends, hooray! As usual, a bus day meant feasting and I slowly polished off a packet of rice cakes, ham and cheese before buying my traditional block of AMAZING milka alpine chocolate for the road. We watched gladiator which was perfect to set the mood for Rome and then had to deal with our own battle on arrival, Italian transport strikes! We made it to the hostel just before transport went on hold for the night and with two new friends added to our gang, Chrissie and Katie we arrived at Yellow! Clearly I am now becoming an alcoholic as the first thing I noticed on the wall was you got a free drink for liking the hostel on Facebook so after dumping my bags I was down at the bar getting my free vodka soda. The rest of the girls came down with these giant green cocktails and I immediately had drink envy, so we sweet talked the bartender into giving me one as well, a Japanese ice tea and after these 2 drinks I was already drunk, and we hadn't even eaten yet.

We walked to the restaurant directly across the street and feeling confident after Venice I tried my Italian allergy line but unfortunately this time was met with a blank face. After some conversation and the aid of another waiter we eventually broke the language barrier and I was dining on grilled chicken and potatoes in a white wine sauce which was quite delicious although I pretty much inhaled my food so I could be wrong. The girls foolishly opted for wine at dinner when no one needed any more drinks, and poor megs feel victim to it and wound up lying on the street with Lucy and I desperately trying to get her to bed. Before megs nap on via palestro we decided to go on a gelati adventure and quickly decided the advertised 5 euro a scoop was much too expensive so the six of us each ordered a scoop and then paid 10 euro for the lot and ran away. When in Rome? 

Hostel life often is really fun, but sharing a 6 bed dorm with 5 american boys who think its completely fine to play drinking games in the room until 6am with the full lights on, led to the worst nights sleep I'd had so far. I went down to meet up with the girls who luckily weren't feeling great either so we sluggishly made our way together to the start of our walking tour at circus maximus. Our classy breakfast stop was the supermarket for fried rice for me, pasta for megs and 2 bread rolls for lucy that we ate sitting on the ground  in front of the supermarket. The tour began and our American guide, Tad was absolutely hilarious. Somehow he managed to intertwine 1000 years of roman history with every modern day tv and movie reference possible, every pun and every analogy possible, plus saying bad ass at least every second sentence. We set off to conquer rome and covered most of the major sights in the 4 hour tour including the forum, pantheon & colosseum with lots of interesting history thrown in which i loved #historynerd and 2 amazing scoops of gelati for lunch (seriously good). At the end of the tour we all felt like people watching so we headed to the Spanish steps and sat in the sun for hours, watching the world go by, Asian tourists taking hilarious photos, tacky Italians getting married in huge cream puff dresses and everything in between. I was craving some pasta so the girls kindly agreed to hunt for a place that caters to my gluten free needs and after multiple no's we found a small family restaurant at the end of the street that came through with the goods and only for 6 euro! You couldn't have wiped the smile off my face and I savoured every little piece of penne and slurp of bolognaise sauce, I went to bed a very happy girl.  

We met up bright and early for a big day of exploring and our first stop was the colosseum! We took Tads tip and bought tickets at the forum which had no line and then proceeded straight over to the colosseum, pushed through the crowds and waltzed our way straight to the front passing a queue of close to 200 people! Fools! The colosseum was absolutely incredible and also scorching hot! We walked all around on every level and I couldn't help but think back to gladiator on the bus and imagine this was the place where Romans would come and witness all those atrocities and wild fights, what a spectacle (albeit a disgusting one)! From there after a few hundred snaps and panoramas we made our way to the Trevi Fountain with a pitstop for bananas and cold water! As we made our way to Trevi I got so excited, the words 'gluten free' and the Italian version 'senza glutine' were all over the place! I would actually be able to enjoy Italian pizza and pasta hooray!! My first glimpse of the Trevi took me straight back to the Lizzie McGuire movie and a small part of me was hunting for Paolo, while the rest was incredulous that after seeing this place years ago, I was finally right there. I was brimming with excitement and pushed my way down to the front to throw in my coin and make a wish. After my first throw we realised we needed photo evidence so I took the opportunity to rid my wallet of the thousands of foreign random coins I could never use again (and that were weighing me down!) and threw about ten more coins in, just to capture the perfect shot- which still didn't happen! It was still super hot so gelati beckoned and I found my favourite flavour combination- pannacotta and strawberry, so amazingly good! The sweet creaminess of pannacotta blended with the fresh fragola sorbet was a perfect match but enough about food, I'm getting hungry. I noticed on my exit my favourite Italian phrase, 'senza glutine' and to my horror they had gluten free icecream cones and I hadn't realised! Perfect excuse to come back and get some more! Lucy megs and I walked the streets for a while longer before heading back for showers and another dinner at the restaurant across the road. I decided to try the special risotto for the night which turned out to be a poor decision, a mushroom and cheese risotto with no mushrooms and way too much cheese, my stomach was not happy, even after lacteeze tablets. I wanted to go and explore some more and digest so I convinced the girls into going for an evening stroll, and we stumbled across a beautiful piazza at sunset where we taunted Lucy with her phobia of pigeons and then found the Trevi at night, only a ten minute walk away when we had been catching the metro earlier! Of course a stop st the Trevi meant a stop at the gelati shop where I tried a gluten free cone for the first time since I was about 14 and my unbeatable flavour combo was even better in a sweet crunchy waffle cone, I savoured every sugary crumb. When we got back to the hostel I met James another busabout boy the girls had met earlier on who decided to tag along on our adventure to the Vatican the next day. 

We started the day with the forum and although the ruins were impressive, nothing could compare to the colosseum, especially on a 42 degree day. Regardless, we wandered around and snapped the remnants of what once was the heart of civilisation and the epicentre of an olden day world. From there we caught the train to the Vatican and were immediately heckled by literally hundreds of tour guides trying to get us to join their group and for the small price of 50 euro each, skip the lines. We all  laughed them off, no line was worth that much to skip, but after am hour and a half in the midday heat, the sun was trying to punish us for being stingy. After finally reaching the front of lime we were all refused entry because we weren't covered up enough... I wanted to cry at this point but luckily megs kept her head and bargained with the security guard to get let out, buy some scarves for us to cover up with and then be let back in without waiting  in the line again, luckily, he obliged. Megs came back with 2 scarves in tow so we had to go in one at a time to cover up our outrageously bare knees and shoulders, what were we thinking showing them on a 42 degree day?! St Peters Basilica was extremely beautiful and enormous, and worth the wait once I finally made it in! I wondered around and stared at the beautiful architecture and decorations inside and marvelled at the huge amount of gold spread around the church before heading out to give James his go. Unfortunately for James, scarves aren't acceptable to cover boys shoulders, the only way is T-shirts so that was it for James and we both sat frustrated as we sent in Megs and Lucy together whose dresses were a sufficient length. Hot and hungry we started on a quest for food and shade and ended up eating a tuna salad sitting in a gutter while the others indulged in pizza. Next stop was the Sistine chapel so we headed off looking for signs, which we never found. Instead we found Castle Sant Angelo which my uncle had told me to visit so we sat in the park for a few hours, laughed nonstop and swung on swings like we were little kids again. We found some other Australians who told us the Sistine chapel was at the back of St. Peter's, we must have missed it! We were SO angry at our stupidity so we bought James a tshirt and headed back to rejoin the line which thankfully this time was only 20mins long. Once we were in again we were kindly told no, the Sistine chapel is in the Vatican Museum 10 minutes walk away, but don't try and go, it had closed 5 minutes earlier. What a fail! Slightly defeated we were starving again and headed towards Trevi once more and the strip of gluten free restaurants. It was still boiling so we stopped at the first restaurant that did gluten free even though it was only pasta, not the pizza i had been craving. It was quite nice, but also quite small so another gelato hit was needed before the wall back to the hostel, I think i have developed an addiction, not the best situation for a lactose intolerant girl with a very limited number of lacteeze tablets.. Uh oh! After a 13 hour day of sightseeing it was time for bed!

We agreed to meet up in the afternoon for Sistine take 2, but in the meantime do our own thing. After booking a bus down to Amalfi coast for the next day my mission was food, specifically gluten free pizza. I had looked up a place and screenshotted directions but as soon as I got lost, the very specific directions were little help. I was close to giving up as once again the roman sun was doing its best to melt me but I persevered and found my way to the god sent Voglia de Pizza. An entire gluten free menu was available, not just pasta, or pizza, but antipasto, bread dishes, mains and desserts- I was so close to taking one of everything until I remembered my budget! I opted for pizza, just margarita with salami and it came out huge like a normal pizza, thin crust and beautiful! I took my first bite and even though I burnt my tongue it was without a doubt the best gluten free pizza I had ever had. I wished so badly I had found this place on day 1 in Rome and dined there every single day but instead I just sat and slowly devoured the entire thing while watching the local Italians hustle and bustle down the cobblestone laneways, the real roman life I had rarely witnessed while frequenting the tourist hot spots. Sadly,the pizza came to an end and I had to get back to meet the girls so I headed off. On our second attempt we easily found the Vatican Museum and likewise the Sistine chapel inside it, I have no idea how we so badly missed it the day earlier. The Sistine chapel is absolutely breathtaking. I'm not an artist or interested in it particularly, but this was different. The images looked 3D,mthe paintings were so accurate and spanned such a huge surface, knowing that Michelangelo lay only centimetres away from the ceiling and the entirety took only 4 years to complete, blew my mind! I cannot fathom how one person could possibly create such a masterpiece even in a lifetime, let alone 4 years, I guess that is why hundreds of people a day just like me line up to take a look (and an illegal photo or 2!) On our return to the hostel we decided to dine in and have a few drinks which was an awful decision. The nachos were expensive, small and tasted average at best so I managed to steal at least 5 chips from every other plate at our table to keep me going and use blue lagoon cocktails to fill the rest of my stomach. Yum yum! It was a sad goodbye to my beautiful roman friends, Lucy megs and James but luckily we are all Melburnians so it was more of a so long, especially as we planned to meet up again in Florence in a few days time!