Assisi, Italy

After touring the Vatican, we hopped on our bus and headed to Assisi, Italy.  This may very well be my favorite place on earth.  Our second day (which I will share tomorrow) was one of the best days of the trip!

When we arrived we were actually late, so we missed our meeting with one of the priests.  We got to wander around at our own pace because our dinner reservations were not for another few hours.  This was also the first day that I really talked to three of the girls who became my best friends on the trip, I ate dinner with them that night and we ended up getting really close.

That night at our hotel was too fun.  We found this playground not too far away and had a great time playing and getting to know each other.   After which we all gathered in the room I was staying in with two other girls and all of us ate junk food.  I guess we were being loud because the leaders came in to tell everyone to get to their rooms.  We were definitely in for a treat the next day!!

Vatican City

Our last day in Rome was mostly spent exploring the Vatican.

To be honest, this was my least favorite part of the trip. I am not Catholic and I don't care much for art, it's just not my thing.  I will say that I did love the Sistine Chapel, what an amazing thing to see!  However, I was a little blown away by the lack of respect from the tourists! The rules were no photography and no talking, it was loud as crap and people were taking FLASH photography! RUDE!  I was glad to be able to experience the Vatican, but I don't think I'll ever go back.

 It was definitely an artists dream!  I don't think there was a square inch of that place that wasn't painted or beautifully decorated.  Like I said, I am glad I got to go, but I definitely wont be rushing back.

Rome, Italy

* I should have mentioned before that you wont see too many pictures of me in these recaps.  I was at my heaviest weight during this trip and I hate about 90% of the pictures of myself.

Our second day in Rome was heavy with sightseeing!  We ate breakfast at the hotel; croissants and toast (we thought the croissants were super cute but by the end of the trip we never wanted to see one again).

Our first stop was the Coliseum.   It was so surreal seeing the coliseum in person!  It is so much bigger than it looks in pictures!  Because we were with People to People, we didn't have to wait in line.  We met up with our guide and went inside immediately at our scheduled time, which was nice.  Our tour was maybe an hour long, then we set out to see the rest of Rome!

After our tour in the Coliseum, we got a tour of the Roman Forum and were then split into groups and sent on a scavenger hunt to find some of Romes most famous landmarks. We found the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, and more.

Surprise in Rome

I know I said I wasn't going to do a day by day recap of this trip, but our travel day and our first night in Rome really does deserve it's own post!

Our travel day and our first night in Rome were eventful to say the least!  First, we realized while in the airport in Germany, that 5 people in our group were on a different flight than the rest of us and would arrive about 2 hours prior.  Thank goodness for one of the girls noticing this, it was completely random and totally not supposed to happen.  Luckily, our DM was at the airport in Rome to meet them and they got a few extra hours in Rome, lucky!

When we got to Rome, we collected our bags, met Josef then headed straight to dinner.  We had dinner at a small restaurant right next the the coliseum!  During dinner we were just sitting there minding our own business, talking about how super excited we were about being in Rome.  Then out of nowhere we hear the Spice Girls song "Wannabe" playing really loudly.  So of course, we jump out of our seats to see whats going on, it took a minute to figure it out - when we start seeing "floats".  Turns out there was a gay pride parade going around the coliseum!  It was definitely a unique start to our time in Rome!  I'm pretty sure the servers at the restaurant hated us because we pretty much ignored our dinner after that!

After our exciting dinner (I can't even tell you what we had because we were so interested in the parade) we ended up stopping at a random spot because we had issues with our bus, the bus and the driver changed at that point and we ended up sitting for a while.  After our bus situation was figured out, we headed straight to the hotel and everyone passed out!  We were exhausted!