European Whirl - Day 8

April 17^th

Venice … Camping Fusina

Modify your backpack into front pack, we were heading to Rome, the place where we can find the real Mac Coy! Rome has 2 kind of have-to-eat-food, gelato and Pizza. The secret was, find a Pizza store that weight the pizza for the price. The bread of the Pizza is not as big as Pizza Hut, thin but crispy (Surprise surprise! We didn’t see any Pizza Hut and Mac Donald here ^.^) For the gelato, is the store nearby the Pantheon.

Another long hours on the bus from Venice to Rome. Since bus is prohibited in the city, Craig drove us to a train station. Kristy bought 51 tickets for all of us, and we took train and metro to the city. We arrived Rome just on the right time to catch the last glimpse of the sun shinning through the Pantheon. But first Kristy walked us to the Spanish step, a piazza where girls and boys used to ‘go on line’ on old days. It was design to connect the chuch above and the boat shape fountain at the bottom of Piazza di Spagna. We had only10 minutes for pictures, and we were moving to the next stop, Trevi Fountain. The story is, if you can throw a coin into the fountain with you back facing it, that mean you’ll back to Rome again. I was busy wondering about whether Pinokio was an Italian story or not, because I saw lots of wooden souvenir shops sell them along the street. Then we were rushing to the Pantheon. It’s really a history came alive, though I got only 6 for this class ^.^ Pantheon used to be a temple, and almost pulled down .Its turning to be a Catholic church might be the reason why it can stay and well preserved now.

Fontana di Trevi

Pantheon – sundial

Pantheon - me

Then we moved to Piazza Navona, where we could find our dinner. Here I met Gillian again. She said she was left behind in the Spanish steps, lucky that we heard what Kristy’s plan was while we were on the bus, so at least the map in her hand, Italian black-uniformed policemen and her few Italian helped her to find us again. But gosh, I forget what the story about this Piazza. Kristy said nothing about it except that there was our meeting point at 5. No wonder why I got 6 for the architecture history class ^.^ There’s an obelisk here … Rome has lots of obelisks, original from Egypt, either as a gift or as take away.

So we had an hour to finished dinner and walked around for a while. We decided to had our first Roman gelato and Pizza. We walked around the piazza, comparing the price, end up walking back to the Pantheon because on the way we saw a gelato shop with long queue … trust the public voice ^.^ It cost me 2 Euro for 3 flavors, while Gillian also bought the Pizza. It turned out that the shops we went was the real Mac Coy; but I didn’t understand, something might went wrong with my tongue, I didn’t taste the different.

It’s time to leave for recharging battery, my digital and me. Our campsite was a very nature; peacocks running wildly, shouting loudly no matter what time it was (they don’t have wristwatch anyway, all they knew was, “it’s spring time!”) 3 small wooden houses clustered in a group, each house with 2 beds. Only thin wooden wall between each house, so any whisper could be heard quite clearly. But I was too tired to bother about that … slept like a log although peacocks on the trees shouting for mates.

Seven Hills Camping