I woke up at 1AM feeling very claustrophobic-we were stopped so when we stop the A/C turns off and with 6 people in this tiny room it got warm and now being up I was very aware of it. I have never felt this anxiety before and knew I had to get up to calm down. I tried to just stick my head to the middle of the room and after about 30 minutes I was able to calm myself down. I really wanted Alex to help me but didn't want to wake him since this whole trip he hasn't slept the best. Alex really didn't like European pillows because they are extra flat, basically not a pillow and every place we stayed only had one pillow so I even folded the pillow to make it somewhat comfortable.
It was fairly bumpy the whole trip-lots of tunnels which made my ears pop and hurt from the pressure. I woke up again but this time at 3:30AM and really had to go to the bathroom. Alex came with me because he was up and had to go too. We went to the bathroom closest to our room and apparently it was either locked or someone was taking a really long time. We wait 20 min and then decided to go to another one down in the next train cart. Then it was back to bed until about 8AM. We didn't hear that couple get up or leave which was great and had more room once we were up at 8. We got dressed--neither of us felt rested but at least we slept for hours in chunks. Had breakfast brought to us by the conductor of the our train cart (that took forever since it was only one girl and there were  like 8-10 carts of 6 people she had to deliver breakfast to). The breakfast consisted of 2 bread rolls, cherry jam, and either coffee/tea/hot chocolate. The rolls were really tasty and I love cherry so it was yummy! I don't feel it was enough or fulfilling for breakfast but that's all that was given.
The train was also an hour behind by the time we reached Rome. By this time we wanted to find where we were staying. This took a long time because we were given the wrong address by the owner. It took an hour and a half to walk to this place so we were exhausted by the time we got there and we haven't even explore Rome yet.
Rome is fairly moderate to navigate-map is realistic but there are just so many streets that names can't fit on the map.
We got checked in, the owner was a little creepy so we locked our door when we left and then headed into the city. We jumped on the tram and bus (Again no one check tickets like Vienna). We saw so much!!
First was the Colosseum then Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, then lunch at a take-out pizza place (we got pizza at a hole in the wall place with a grandma serving the pizza who didn't speak English at all--we knew we were in a good place then. Alex got sausage and cheese and I got mushroom and cheese--very authentic Italian and it was delicious!). Then it was on to Vatican City with St. Peter's Bascilica, Pantheon, Maria Maggiore Monument which is gigantic. We did so much walking our legs were pretty shot by this point. We stopped for some gelato when it started to sprinkle a bit and we were a little lost so we needed to straighten our our bearings. We got 3 flavors, anilla & nutella, cookie pieces & vanilla, and almond. Soooooo good!! Then we went to dinner (I can get use to this dessert before dinner thing!!). We went to again another hole in the wall that had good ratings on trip advisor and we got the last table in the front of the restaurant (there were only room for maybe 6-7 groups of 2-3 people in the front--very mall and maybe a couple tables in the back-perfect timing for us). We shared a local favorite fettuccine pasta dish with traditional tomato sauce and margherita neopolitana pizza (olive oil, parmesan reggiano, mozzerella, and basil). Yummo!!! It was delicious and served very fast and the best part it only cost us 20 Euro. Woohoo! Everyone working in the restaurant were men. Most of the restaurant customers spoke English so they must get a lot of business from trip advisor.
Then we had to walk back to Colosseum which looked really cool at night and got on our bus to our tram to the apartment. We were wiped!
1st impressions:
-Just massive and quite breath-taking, a beautifully majestic feel, crowded but not packed, smoking of course, people were more put together-dressed very nice, always presenting themselves, lots and lots of make-up, nicer dressed, very serious/stern faces, make you wonder how this place was built because the monuments are monstrous. Rome feels like a naklectic place -mix of ethnicities, and cultures.
Once we got back we showered, in the world's smallest and most ineffective shower, I have ever seen. It was i would say 2 feet by 2 feet and a raised square and then a curtain to make the space even smaller. I think I got more water out of the shower then in it. Anyway we showered and both of us were out!