Rome

Flew in to Ciampino on Sunday 28 and got the bus and metro into the central station. Found the hostel which is pretty cool with a great party atmosphere. In the evening I went for a walk around the Plaza Venice where there were old roman ruins laying all over the place and around the outside of the Colloseum. At night we went with a big group from the hostel with a few bottles of good Italian wine to drink on the Spanish steps.
The next day it was time to hit up the Vatican. The plaza there was pretty cool, but the queue was enourmous to get into the Museum... took just 20 minutes to walk past the queue to get to the front. The guys at the front had been waiting for 3h, so I formed a new line for Australians and got straight in, followed by crowds of more Aussies. The museum was pretty cool with plenty of painted walls, egyption mummies and fancy paintings and sculptures. The cistine chapel was pretty fancy with some colours on the ceiling and everyone sneaking in some photos. Once they stopped singing in the Basilica I checked that out and also saw the tombs for all the popes underneath.
On Tuesday I visited the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, Quattro Fountains, Quirinale which appeared to be the presidential palace, the Trevi fountain, the Tritone fountain and the spanish steps. Rome is pretty cool that you can just wonder around and find these cool places.
On Wednesday 31 Oct I visited the ruins near the Colloseum, and came across the San Giovanni church which had some steps from Jerusalem that Jesus had supposedly walked up. Everyone was trying to get to the top by only walking on their knees. I thought they were all crazy and just walked up some other stairs.
With all the americans at the hostel we decided to throw a Halloween party. We gathered several hundred euros and got ourselves a good stash of drinks before getting into the erasmus (exchange student) welcome party.
Thursday was a public holiday in Italy. I visited the Palatine hill which had more ruins. There wasnt too much to see up here, just the foundations for the old palaces, etc. Then went inside the Colloseum which looked just the same as from outside. I came across some church that had a big statue of a mouth with a line of tourists getting photos of their arm stuck down its throat. Apparently some 'mouth of truth'. The hostel found out at 11pm that they had chronically overbooked, so we all had to share beds, but decided just to head back to Trevi fountain and Spanish steps with some wine and then returned to the hostel with more McDonalds than we've ever seen.
In the morning I had I had lunch in a plaza in Rome and then took the slow train up to Florence.