Rome, 3 days in awe

This past weekends was truly one of the greatest times of my life. I have never experienced anything close to that of Rome, and I appreciated it even more after our "close call" at the airport. We began by marching straight through security, because we figured since we didnt have any bags to check and checked in online that we would be fine. We were wrong. When we passed through security I made the first slip up, by looking at the arrival times instead of departures for Rome, so that caused the group a 30 minute unnecessary walk, but when we stepped on the plane we realized that our boarding passes had not received the passport approval stamp so we ran back to the ryan air check in, skipped the entire security line, but sure enough we barely made it on. In the end this was a blessing in disguise, because Ryanair is a first come first serve seating airline, so I ended up sitting next to two girls from the Rioja wine region, who are students in Barcelona. They were very nice and gave me the best areas to tour and ride bike trails near the "Rio Oja" (Oja river, where the region gets its name), so we are going to do that trip in two weekends. When we landed in Rome we took a bus to the Termini train station, which is in the northeast part of Rome, about 2 miles from the coliseum. We checked in, got ready for dinner and hit the streets of Rome. We found a great restaurant within 5 minutes of leaving our hostel which was called la famiglia. We started off with cheese stuffed rolls and a bottle of red wine (for less than a euro each) and proceeded to order pasta, I ordered a bacon-red sauce pasta and when I took my first bite the only thing I could do was look up and tell the table, "This is by far the greatest tasting food I have ever had". It really was awesome. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel because we had a big Friday ahead of us.

We woke up around 8 and knew that the first sight we wanted to see was the Coliseum, so we headed in that general direction while seeing a few plazas / monasteries on the way. Our first stop was at the plaza della republica, a huge roundabout with a fountain in the middle surrounded in a circular pattern of classic roman architecture, (pictures coming when I buy a memory card adaptor). From there, we headed to the Santa Maria Maggloire Monastery and the San Pietro in Vicoli building, but didnt take our time because the next stop, of course, was the Coliseum. It was breathtaking, massive, and I couldn't fathom how people built such a wonder without modern technology. For a few Euros we were able to go inside and take pictures and tour all around the first and second floors. An amazing experience to say the least. From there we toured ancient Rome, the Arco de Constantino, monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II, and pretty much all of south Rome before heading towards the Pantheon. The Pantheon was another place that was just truly a jaw dropper. They were doing yearly upkeep on the right part of the outside, but it was the inside that really blew my mind. It was massive and how they closed in that dome roof that seems half a mile above your head I still have no idea. After the pantheon we had a great lunch, went to the trevi fountain, saw the presidents mansion, and many more sights. I'm going to pick up there later because I have to get up for class tomorrow.