Cinque Terre 2 AND Rome

We are realizing time is running out to post while we are over here, so this may be shorter. We did stay an extra night in Cinque Terre and the weather was beautiful! On Sunday, when we hiked them all, we actually went swimming and could lay out comfortably on the rocks in the sun to dry! We stood out as Americans, or at least tourists, because our swim suits covered so much!! As in Josh had board shorts instead of underwear (ie whitie tighties) like all the good old men out there and I had a regular 2 piece instead of bra/ underwear. It was so cute seeing the little ones running around naked, without a care!
Only bummer was that sunset was 5 pm, so we had to make sure to leave Monterosso (town number 5) by 3:30 or 4 to make it back to Vernazza by dark. If you go, definately check out pizza and the place by the water. You cant miss it, just follow the main road to the water and it is on your left. There are three tables, but best to take it take out and eat outside. One night we did meet a family of 4 there (but dad was taking a break in the room) who had been traveling around Europe together since June. The son was 8th grade, daughter 4th grade and from Nevada City, CA. They will fly home in December after 6 months! I was most impressed by how excited the kids were to tell us what they saw, learned, and want to do at school when they get back.
ROME:
Tuesday morning we took the train down to Rome. We had written down a possible place to stay (for the most part we stopped booking ahead of time in case things dont work out so we dont waste money/ have flexiablity to change). Arriving in Tremini station it was a comfortable day out and within 5 minutes we found the hostel and got a room! If you are there, check out the Travelers Hostel, closest metro is Tremini. It is clean- they make you leave between 11-2 to clean all the rooms/ kitchen/ bathrooms- with two free computers to use, 2 kitchens, free breakfast AND dinner! There are some huge perks to traveling in the off season- the crowds are a lot smaller, don't need to plan ahead as much due to less tourists, and free hostel dinners/ other perks sometimes. One of our roommates from Portugal (from a city there where Port wine is from actually!) said he waited for 6 hours in line to see the Sistine Chapel in July. We were able to walk through the museum maze right to it. Tuesday nights they had pizza, as much as you want til its gone, then every other night we could go to the restaurant next door for a bowl of pasta and glass of wine for free!

This gave us more money and freedom for things like an Ancient Rome tour and a Rome Pass. The Rome Pass was a suggestion by someone in the hostel, costs 20 Euro, and gives you first two admissions for free plus discounts on other things around the city, and free transportation via buses and metro for three days. This got us into the Colusseum + Forum and then to the ancient port town Ostia Antica. It didn't work for the Vatican because its not in Rome. On Wednesday we decided on a 3 hour walking tour to understand a little more about what we were looking at. We ended up getting an unemployed archeologist (kind of ironic) as a tourguide, and she did a really good job of pointing out the important things and painting a picutre of how things used to be (and had recreation pictures to show us). By the time the tour was over it was starting to get dark, at around 5, and we started walking towards the river since we hadnt been there yet. There were SOOO many birds in the trees by the river, you could tell who was local because they had umbrellas not for the rain, but to avoid getting pooped on. Luckily when we hit the river we stumbled into Castel Sant Angelo, which looks really cool at night. After taking a couple pictures we looked to our left and saw the night view of St. Peter's Basilica, another amazing view at night. We strolled over there and got a feel for where we were headed in the morning, then headed back to the hostel for another free dinner. The next day was ALL Vatican city, which is pretty much explained above. St. Peter's Basilica is one of the most amazing structures we have ever seen, just the amount of detail on every square foot of that place looks like it would take a month to mold and construct.
The next day...or two...was pretty much taken up by traveling to greece. Starting off, the train that we needed to take to get to the ferry was full in second class, so after an hour of effort the guy getting us our tickets was able to pull some strings and upgrade us to first class. The train ran about a 45 minutes late and it was a little bit of a rush to find and get to the ferry, which was scheduled to leave at 8pm and arrive at noon the next day. A word of caution with the taking the "free" ferry as a perk of having eurail, normally that free ticket only gets you on the boat and only allows you space outside. If the ferry were full we would have had to find a spot to crash outside, something they forget to mention even when you buy the ticket. This was explained to us after a bit of confusion when we asked where we could put our bags and we were pointed into a room of seats and were told it would be ok because it is too cold outside...could've been a bad one. Regardless, we got on and got going and met some americans from north carolina and georgia, which was a good thing as for the security of our stuff because the area we were in had a bunch of gypsy's. To make matters a little worse, we basically went through a storm, making the boat jump around just as much as the miss sarah on a rough day, and also making us extremely late to get into Patras. When we decided to get up and walk around after getting through the rough part of the storm, we saw that the boat was trashed, water and broken dishes everywhere inside, one semi being transported tipped over and bent a railing on the back deck, pretty much this was a boat that was not prepared for any kind of weather. Needless to say, the weather delayed us by about 5 or 6 hours, putting us into Patras well past dark and not giving us time to get to Olympia that night as planned. By the way, NEVER take a superfast ferry, it was not their fault that it was delayed, but they have something against feeding you, keeping you informed on whats going on, and customer service in general. The people on board made every effort to ignore any eye contact in case you may have a question and were in no way willing to help with making a contact to a hotel or suggestions on bus schedules or places to stay or anything of the sort because of the long delay. Enough venting on those people. To make things better, when we arrived into Patras, it was too late to catch a bus, and every hotel in town was 100% booked because of some event running that day. Luckily there were a few beds in a hostel, it was only 12 euro for the night and only semi sketchy. The next day we got an early bus to Olympia and that is where we are today...a little rainy but really nice people, a great hostel with a warm shower, and plenty of sites and history to check out. On the schedule for today is the original Olympic stadium and the temple of Zues!