When trying to book the cheapest flight it was obvious that the 8-hour layover in Rome on the way to Athens was the best way to go. So we thought, ‘hey lets make a day out of it’ and switched to the next flight to make it a 20-hour lay over and vowed to just sleep in the airport to save money. So we get in at 10am and make it to the Coliseum by noon because my wonderful friend Rick Steves told me some local secrets. Ambitiously we packed in the coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Palatine hill, Michelangelo’s Moses (in St Peters in Chains), The Vatican City, St Peter’s Church, the Pantheon, and Rick Steve’s night tour throughout the famous squares, all in one day. The only regret I have is that with so much to do we had such a strict time schedule that if one thing went wrong our whole day was behind… and that definitely happened. Let’s just say that during lunch we heard thunder – but I looked up and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I had a tank top on, so I didn’t think much of it. But while I was staring at Michelangelo’s Moses, in total bliss, Mallory came bursting in to tell me it was pouring rain outside. And this was not Southern California pouring rain; this was Costa Rica and the Amazon pouring rain. We went back and forth and with whether wait it our or take our chances running through it, and finally decided to just book it to the metro station. So we started sprinting through the streets of Rome - in my little cotton sweater and tank top - and reached the metro station completely wet. Naturally we were a spectacle because once we reached our destination and climbed back out of the metro it was bright and sunny again meaning if we had simply waited 5 minutes like everyone else we could have spared ourselves some humiliation (but at the same time I wouldn’t have been as good of a story). It also wouldn’t have been a big deal but our fiasco caused us to arrive at the Vatican Museum 11 minutes after the Sistine chapel was closed to tourists... I still cant talk about it I am so mad. I guess it just means I am going to need to go back.
So instead we head over to St Peter’s and spend three hours in the Church to make up for not seeing the Vatican Museum. We even attend 5:00pm mass, which was in Italian in the most famous church in the world – an experience I wont easily forget.
Finally late that night we head back to the airport by 11:00pm so as to pick up our stored luggage before the room closed. We then find some newspapers on the ground and snuggle up next to the homeless men for the night. Hahaha… you think im kidding. Definitely not. We had no other option but to curl up on the hard, freezing marble floors, using jackets as blankets and luggage as pillows. But I did discover something very positive about myself: apparently I can sleep any where because I slept the whole night, waking up a couple times to change positions, when Mallory and Megan literally slept a total of 10 minutes and just walked around and twiddled their thumbs for 6 hours. Evidently sleeping in the airport wasn’t the best idea in the whole world.
But we survived and arrived in Athens around 9am the next morning.
The Athens portion of the story will come later in the weekend since I am leaving for Kutan Hora tomorrow for sight seeing and hiking! But hang tight in suspense because Athens is the best part!
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