Rome itself is the most poor looking place that I have ever been. I actually referred to it as Cuba 2.0, which is an insult to Cuba. The only places that weren't filled with graffiti were the churches, the Vatican and the Colosseum. There were homeless people absolutely everywhere, and people coming up to you asking for money. Which is fine, some people have hard lives, but they legit follow you around and make you feel like they're going to mug you; it's scary.
Our first day, we went on a bus tour and were able to see most of the city. A lot of it is very pretty yes, but I just could't get past all of the graffiti. We went around one full turn and decided to go get some lunch. We went to this little pizza place on the corner of the street. There was a guy and an older lady working there. The lady bumped into the guy and made him drop a pizza, I thought he was going to stab her, he was so mad (and it was his fault). The pizza we had (not the one from the floor) was delicious, but kind of expensive. While we are eating lunch, we hear a lot of noise outside. When we look outside, we see the biggest (peaceful) protest that we've even seen. It basically shut down the road and we were stuck in that little bit of Rome for like two hours.
When the bus started running again, we were able to see the Colosseum, which is absolutely surreal;
it is very pretty and to think that it was built so very long ago. We did go inside a little bit, but there were too many people and because of the protest, time was limited, so we didn't stay long enough to actually get to the middle (we should have).
I should mention that by this point, I've twisted my ankle probably 6 times because of the rain and uneven cobblestones (and my clumsiness). We get back on the bus and she informs us that this is the last bus and she'll be dropping us off at the last stop (which is a 10 minute walk from our hotel if you know your way around Italy). The lady gives us directions to our hotel and we're on our way. On our way under a bridge that has absolutely no lighting and is where all the homeless people stay. I basically just wanted to cry the whole time. We made it to the other side of the bridge and went into a store where we asked for directions again. These little old ladies tried so hard to help us, but they didn't speak any English. After stopping in multiple hotels and hostels, and cursing a lot, we were finally in a region that we knew. That's when we decided to go for supper...
I decided to have spaghetti and a coke (found out later that the coke cost like $8 CAD :|). The meal was lovely, the service was lovely, until we had to pay. I asked to pay with visa and the dude basically told me off, saying how inconvenient it was for him that I wasn't paying in cash. He was the rudest person I've ever encountered. We went back to our hotel and basically died because we just wanted to go back to England.
The next day we basically just shopped around for a bit because we had to leave to go to the airport 2, so we didn't have a whooole lot of time to do anything else. We finally found a McDonalds and had a half sensible meal. I say half sensible because they messed up my BigMac (9 countries now!), but the fries were delicious. There was also a man walking around McDonalds with a cup, asking for money :|. After that, we went back to the airport where we found some more rude people, and we were off to England!!
When it comes to Rome, as my dear old friend Taylor says:
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