Early Mornings Make for Tiring Days

After our full day in the city we were beyond tired and were ready for a night of well deserved rest. The hostel wasn´t really conducive to this, however. Moreover, I was stressing over how we were going to get from Santander, Espana to San Sebastian, our beach town. It all worked out but at the time I didn´t know wheter a train or a bus would get us there and how much extra this would cost us. We hadn´t budgeted for this and I felt extremely bad that I forgot about this step that Beth wasn´t counting on. The internet cafe we frequented in Roma was hot and stuffy and always busy so it was hard to figure things out online (the computers were also slow) and to write in my blog... thus the delay. We were both tired from not sleeping well. The sewage smell was really hard to bear at times and every morning we were awoken at 5am by some weird birds calling out in the distance. I was never able to get back to sleep because they kept screaming and because once awake I became very aware of how warm it was in the room. My travel clock said it was 83 degrees... So Thursday we decided that it was going to be a light day. We left a little later and went to the Catacombs. I again had a chance to use my SpanItalian. On that day however, I had a few people who didn´t take to it too well... oh well, at least I was trying. We made it to the Catacombs and I was initially disappointed that we had to be led down there in tour fashion... more tours, just what I was looking for! But it was a good thing. The tour guide is one of the many priests that is now caring for the Catacombs so he was very knowledgable and friendly. The Catacombs were created by Christians between the 1st and 5th centuries when they were faced with not being able to bury their loved ones within the city walls of Ancient Rome. We got to see where people were actually buried-small rectangular slots along the walls and spaces that were niched out for prayer and gathering. After that it was off to see a little more of the Colosseum and then to the Pantheon. Going to the Pantheon we crossed a street where I was actually afraid I wouldn´t come out alive... There was no crosswalk and we just had to step out with hopes that all drivers were paying attention and they´d actually stop for us. We ended our day out with more pizza and Coca-Cola and counted the hours till our check out time where we could bid a ciao! to Hostel Beautiful.