Andrew and I made the quick decision that we wanted to take a holiday and since neither of us had been to Rome we made plans to go there. After this was all booked I found out that I still had almost two weeks until classes started so we booked another trip, this one to Barcelona. However we weren't so smart in our planning and we were scheduled to get in from Barcelona with one day to spare in London before heading to Rome.
But we're young so we figured we'd go for it anyhow.
We got great prices on lastminute.com and had 4* hotels the whole time.

Barcelona was beautiful. We had to catch a bus at 3:30am to get to our flight because the tube doesn't run all night. But once we got there and napped we were good to go for the day. Their metro was easy to use and we spent the first day wandering around the Gothic Quarter, a section filled with narrow winding streets with balconies and they seemed so full of life. We made it down to the harbor for lunch before wandering some more and finally heading to the hotel for some room service and to crash early, it'd been a long long day of traveling.

The second day we stopped by a tourist information booth to grab info on doing a bike tour, and headed over to sign-up for it. While waiting for the tour to start, on another winding street, we grabbed pastries from a little shop. It was great because I was able to understand some of what was going on and speak spanish a little to people. I used the phrases "do you speak english?", "one minute please" and "thank you" most. I managed a few other that surprised even me but even without that everyone was so friendly it didn't seem to matter, it just made me feel better to at least try.

We were the only people signed-up for the bike tour so we had a personal tour of Barcelona all to our selves. This was exceptionally good because I needed the time to re-learn how to ride a bike, the phrase "just like riding a bike" now means nothing to me because I didn't remember and almost ran into the wall five times just trying to get out of the alley. It was a sunny, beautiful day to ride around, once I got the hang of running people over we were off. It was 3 hours and took us all over the city, down to the beach, through the Gothic Quarter and to see most of the monuments we wouldn't have found otherwise.

Our tour guide had recommended a restaurant in this quaint little square for dinner so we went there. It's a cooking school so it was excellent quality for a very inexpensive price. We went all out, appetizers, sangria and even desert.

Our final day we had a lot of time to kill so we wandered the Gothic Quarter some more, our favorite area by far, and eventually found a pub with beers for 1 euro. We had a few there before heading to the hotel to grab our stuff and get to the airport. Well, for all the time we had all day we managed to get to the service counter for our flight 5 minutes after they closed check-in for our flight. They told us there was nothing they could do, we were stuck (even though the plane was 45 minutes delayed in leaving). So after a minor break down we bought new tickets to leave Saturday morning and found a hotel with shuttle service to stay at. We would have stayed at the airport but I was past my breaking point and I was scheduled to work Saturday night until close and was going to have to head straight from the pub to the airport to get to Rome.

It ended up working very well in our favor besides the spending so much extra money part. The hotel was really nice with a bed so huge that I rolled over 5 times to get from one side to the other side. We slept so well, probably better then we would have it we had made it home Friday night instead and had to take 3 different buses to get home. So instead we made it home Saturday around 2 with time to repack, I had just made dinner getting ready to go to work when my manager let me know they were slow that night so I didn't have to go in. Instead I got to sleep early to get up to catch yet another bus at 3:30am.

We arrived in Rome soon after the sun had risen. We had quiet a time getting lost trying to find the hotel and trying to confer with people with no common language. But we made it to the hotel, even better than the one in Barcelona.

After a rest we headed out to explore. We figured we'd hit all the main sites that we're near each other so we started with the Spanish Steps. We grabbed pizza from this little shop tucked in near the Metro station. I have no idea what I ate because I told the guy behind the counter to just give me whatever he'd have so it was some kind of white pizza with mushrooms and I think anchovies or something, absolutely delicious.

We walked all over the city seeing so much and absolutely exhausting ourselves. Following the routine in Spain we grabbed some take-out from this little place around the corner from the hotel where they spoke almost no english and curled up watching some tv in our room.

Monday we got up for breakfast at the hotel since it was included and since it was a wonderful european breakfast there was bread, meat and cheese that we used to make sandwiches to have for lunch, brilliant idea.

We went to the Colosseum and explored that. Then went to St. Peter's and climbed all the way up to the top where we got a 360-degree view of Rome. We ate our sandwiches in the plaza outside of St. Peter's and then walked down along the river to find a monument we had seen from the top of St. Peter's. The whole city was amazing because every corner we turned there was something new we hadn't seen yet. We kept thinking we knew where we were and then we'd get into the square and find that we were no where we had been. It was pretty great to see all the little squares and fountains.

Monday night we had dinner outside in this little alley and splurged again having an appetizer, desert and a thing of their homemade red wine, very tasty.

Tuesday we had breakfast and packed extra sandwiches since we were flying out that night. We went over to this big park and wandered around through the gardens. Our day is going to sound romantic but it was us so it was mostly goofing around the whole time. We had lunch in the park by a nice fountain and then wandered over to this little lake where we discovered it was only 6 euro to row a boat around it for 20 minutes. Since we had time and really wanted to check out the temple structure in the lake we headed off. Andrew did most of the rowing but made me switch with him towards the end so I could row us into things too.

I can't remember what else we did that day before heading home but I know I needed to get this off before it's way too late, especially since I need to write another one soon. Pictures will be added soon.