i woke up yesterday at 7 am to go the the airport to receive her. she was to get in at 8:30 and there is a 30-minute train ride involved in the commute. i got to the airport a little late, but it turns out her flight was delayed about 30 minutes. when i looked at the arrivals board, i saw that about ten planes had arrived at the same time! gushes of people were coming out of the arrival gate, but no samm. she ended up coming out at like 11 without her bag! because her connection was cut so close, her bag hadn't made it onto the second flight.
so we finally leave the airport and take the train back to rome. we went to the pizzeria next to my apartment for lunch. then i had to go take an italian oral exam, so samm took a nap.
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That is all I wrote while Samm was here! I will pick up from where I left off...
When I got back from my exam, which I think I did okay on, Samm and I packed bags to take to our hotel. We headed over to the Vatican Museum at around 5pm. We get there and find it stops letting visitors in at 4! That was a big disappointment, but we figured we had the next morning to go see the Sistine Chapel. We headed over to St. Peter's Basilica in the meantime. It was raining a little, but we both got some really good pictures. We went inside the Basilica, which I think Samm liked. After that, we decided to check into our hotel, which was a little difficult to find (just because I am not very good with directions!) We stopped to do some souvenir shopping on the way! We also got our first gelato of Samm's trip, which was veryyy good.
We check into our hotel, which is very close to the Vatican (on Ottaviano and Germanico) and leave pretty much right away to go to dinner. My roommates recommended a restaurant near the Colosseum, so Samm was able to see that at night. That was actually my first time seeing it at night also. The restaurant ended up being a cute little place that you probably have to be looking for to find. The food was good, a little expensive, but very Italian. Samm had been craving pasta with red sauce, so she was able to get that. Pasta here is prepared al dente, which we were not used to. I got ravioli and Samm got penne with zucchini.
In the middle of dinner I started shivering uncontrollably and became disoriented. I don't know how to explain what was happening, but I could not relax. It came on really fast, and I think it was exhaustion (I had slept verrrry little in the previous 48 hours). I felt so bad because I had wanted to take Samm to the Trevi Fountain and get as much out of the night as possible. She started to feel sick, though, so we decided just to head back to the hotel and get an early start. I fell asleep almost right away, and when Samm felt a little better, she slept too.
We were going to wake up at like 7am to go back to the Vatican Museum, but I slept through the alarm. Unfortunately, we didn't get out of the hotel until 11. Again, I felt horrible. The line to the Museum was enormous. Needless to say, Samm never got to see the Sistine Chapel. I know there was nothing we could do about it, so we resolved that that fact would just give her all the more reason to return some day!
Soooo we headed to my apartment so I could shower and so we could pack more clothes. Samm's bag still hadn't arrived, so she packed some of my clothes. On my way to the ATM (which is called a bancomat here) around the corner, I look in the guard booth and see suitcases! One of them was hers and the other was a boy visiting a girl in my program that was on the same flight as Samm! So we got to leave for Florence with all of our own belongings...such a relief!
We head to Termini Station, a Metro stop, and the main train station in Rome. We buy our tickets easily at a self-service station. We get assigned seats, which was good. We make it on the train with not much time to spare and head to Florence around 2:30.
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