Europe Day 7: Wednesday, May 16 (Rome)

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(Wrote this on Deck 18/19 of the cruise, listening to an ebook)

Today, I woke up at 5:45 to curl my hair for Rome! We ate breakfast—I didn't eat as much since I ate sooo much last night at Shanghai. We rode the cruise shuttle to the bus station where we met our tour group, Shore Excursion with Costco. The bus took about two hours to get to the city, because of traffic/accident, during which I fell asleep. The first sight we saw was the Vatican where we saw the Pope. He's not important to me, but he's famous, lol. I got a zoomed in shot of him! We went to a bathroom there, where my bathroom stall had a broken door, and boy, was that an adventure.

I kept being in the back of the group because I keep wanting photos, haha! We then went back to the bus to drive to the Trevi Fountain! I tried throwing a coin over my shoulder "to return back to Rome," but it hit the couple behind me😆. For lunch, Cristina and I found the Radford and Kerrie at Pizza in Trevi, a delicious pizzeria. Afterwards, we went to a souvenir shop, where an Indian man started flirting with me, telling me I was "bella" and offering me a discount😂. He even gave me a free pencil, haha, along with a hug😐. Is a day in Italy really a day in Italy without gelato? Of course we had to stop for some!

The biggest attraction in Rome is probably the Colosseum. It was an amazing experience to be able to see it. It truly is a great structure, but it's incredibly sad how many people died there. A few summers ago, I worked as a Museum & Gallery guard and there was a detailed painting of the Colosseum with martyrs which I loved—that's what I kept visualizing as I stepped into the arena. The Colosseum holds 50,000 guests. It took only 8 years to build, but 5 years to clean up. The outer walls have holes because of people stealing its metal parts. Cristina and I tried getting photos but we kept holding up the crowd and Corinna, our bus tourguide, kept urging us along.

Sadly, the Colosseum was our last stop. I wish that the tour wasn't so rushed.

4:30 We got back on the cruise ship and are now on the deck.

We were planning to eat at Taste at 6:30 and then maybe go bowling. Honestly, chilling and eating on the cruise is the best part. However, we actually just ate at the Irish Pub; I had nachos and fajitas. We watched Minute to Win It and then went to the Garden Cafe for dessert. I had bites of lemon cheesecake (meh), brownie (meh), peach cobbler (ew), and cookies, lol😬.

We went back to our cabin to play Dark Stories, a murder mystery app, but when I went to the Escape Room to reserve, it was available so I rallied everyone up. If you don't know what an escape room is, it's basically a game where a group is "locked into a room" (usually just closed) for an hour. In order to escape, the group must use clues to solve puzzles which lead to the room key. The theme on the ship was Escape: The Big Top (circus) and it was actually a huge escape room competition that fit around 6 groups. Since our group was smaller, an Asian family joined our team, and the grandma was cute, trying to help us solve the code. We had to figure out riddles and games surrounding circus acts, magicians, animals. It was so fun but really hard! We almost got the magic sequence, which would open the door, but another team already had it😕.

To celebrate our loss, we went upstairs to get dessert 😉 and play Dark Stories in Cabin 13164.

Tomorrow, we're headed to Pisa and Florence!

TTYL

Made with Joy,

Abby Joy