Part 4: Rome

We woke up early the next morning and headed to the airport shuttle so we could catch our 1 PM flight from Prague to Rome.  On our way to the airport we received a call from some friends who were already at the airport telling us that it was closing because of the volcanic ash at 12 PM.  We got to the airport and stared in amazement at the departure board which had "cancelled" for every single flight out.  Panicking, we hopped on another bus to the train station.  The train station was a mad house and we got in an extremely long line to book tickets.  After a few hours of waiting (and a few Burger King stops) we reached the front only to be told that there were no trains to Rome in the next 2 days.  They directed us to another line and after a few more hours in that line we ended up getting a ticket to Munich, Germany (which we could travel to for free with our Eurail passes).  Five hours later we were in Munich.  After walking around the city we packed it in around 2 am knowing that we would have to get up around 5 to go attempt to get tickets to Rome.  We ended up getting on a 12 hour, 150 euro train to Rome.

The trip went a lot smoother once we actually arrived in Rome.  We had some excellent pizza (for every meal) and got some tours of some great places.  The first day we went to Austia (sp?) which is an ancient coastal village with structures that are still standing.  Later that day we went to the Colosseum but ended up having to stay outside because we got there too late to do a tour.  That night we encountered more travel troubles when we talked to our program director and learned that the ash may completely disrupt the rest of our travel plans.  We made the decision to leave Rome and head back to Cork (which Loyola said they would pay for).  This meant cutting Barcelona out of our trip but we decided this was the safest option.  We headed to the train station around 8 and waited in line for about 3 hours before getting to the front.  We were able to book a ticket to Paris for a few days in the future and paid around 250 euro for those seats.

The next day we headed to the Vatican and got a full tour.  This was a pretty amazing tour and gave a great history of one of the worlds most famous places.  In this tour we got to see the Sistine Chapel which is absolutely amazing.  After that tour we had another one of the Catacombs of Rome.  This bus tour took us to 4-5 different sights which were of significance in Rome.

The following day we did some touring by ourselves and went into the Colosseum and the Forum.  My one major regret of Rome was not getting a guided tour of the Colosseum.  I find what went on there to be fascinating and I wish I had done more than just walked around the inside.  After the Forum we saw the Trevi Fountain, a cathedral dedicated to Loyola, the Spanish Steps, and a few other beautiful cathedrals.

We went to sleep early this night because we had to be up early to catch our train from Rome to Paris.