ITALIA DAY 1

I Went into Rome for the day with Karyn, Megan and Brett.  As we were leaving Civitavecchia (where the boat is ported - about an hour outside of Rome), we saw a huge city wall that the Romans built.  One thing has become increasingly clear to me on this trip - the Romans really enjoyed building walls.  We were all going to have a few days in Rome (them - the next couple days, and me - later this week with my excursion), so we decided to not rush into the really touristy things.  We basically walked around the entire day.  We wandered through Rome, mostly staying in the NE part of the city, and just had a great time looking at the buildings and wandering the windy little roads.  It was a great time.  After a little walking, we randomly happened upon the Spanish Steps. We stopped for a photo shoot and kept walking.We got lunch at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place and it was DELICIOUS!  There were huge sheets of pizza and all you had to do was point to which kind you wanted, and they would take a huge pair of kitchen shears and cut you out a square.  They were half-cooked on display, so they popped them in the oven, folded them in half, and wrapped it up halfway in paper as a little to-go pizza.  It was crunchy and delicious; I got the one that just had all the different kinds of bell peppers on it, and I'm going to go ahead and say it was one of the best pizzas I've ever eaten.  And it was only 5 euros for the enormous pizza and a water bottle.  Armed with our portable pizzas, we walked around more and accidentally (despite our conscious decision not to visit the tourist spots) found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain.  So cool!  It was beautiful and huge and the water was so clear and so cold.  We sat by the fountain and ate our pizzas.  After that, we kept walking.  We walked by a liquor store and we were ushered in by the owner to sample his limoncello - what were we to do? :) After our mini little shots, which I'm not too fond of, by the way - I had to buy another water bottle to get the taste out of my mouth, we kept wandering around.  It was blazing hot and we were pretty lost, so we got a taxi to take us to their hotel for the next couple nights.  They are staying in Rome until Friday.  It was about a 10 minute car ride, so we were all glad we splurged the 10 euros to avoid the heat of the day.  We took a break in the air conditioning and then went next-door to a little cafe and got a snack.  I got some sort of tart dessert thing, which was delicious, and Megan got gnocchi.  I. Love. Italy.
        After that I had to go back and meet the bus to go back to Civitavecchia, so I said goodbye to my friends and hopped on the bus.  On the way back, I got a look at some of the beautiful Italian countryside.  It's really gorgeous.  One familiar thing, too - wildflowers are the same everywhere in the world.
        Tomorrow I leave on my 5-day trip to Pisa, Florence, Assisi, Rome, and Pompeii.  Gotta go pack!