ROMA

So the next day in Rome we explored some of the other main sites such as the Trevi fountain, the pantheon, Spanish steps and some other churches. It was fun yet tiring seeing all the sites. When we were on the hunt for the trevi fountain we met a group of Italian boys who were fun at first, but then they got annoying. They couldn’t speak English so it was funny trying to translate everything using the Italian translator, but then they started following us (because they said they knew where the trevi fountain was)..well we started to get tired of them so I looked up how to say shut up and leave in Italian and said it to them halfway joking, but halfway serious, they didn’t get the hint though until we started to go to every store we passed and they finally left. One of the guys was totally in love with Arlan, but Arlan wasn’t having any of it and was like leave me alone, and tried to learn how to say “I have a boyfriend in Italian”.

We finally made it to the trevi fountain and did the typical throw the coin in the fountain, and it is supposed to ensure your trip back to Rome…not sure if that will happen because I have already seen everything there haha. But site seeing is so exhausting, we intended to go out but we were just so wiped and Rome isn’t really a part city so we stayed in to prepare for our travels to see Gina’s family the next day.

The next day we take a train to Cassino, to get to Alvito were Gina’s fam lives. Gina had to make a sign since she had never met her family before. We get picked up in a white truck and drive to the town of Alvito. It was a very small town (kinda like Cullowhee) with not too much there, but it was such a pretty town, very mountainious. We get to Gina’s family’s house and they have prepared the typical ten course Italian meal! The food was great there was pasta, pizza, mozzarella, bread, chicken, vegetables, salad, dessert, and fruit….the list goes on and were all so full! It was nice to have a true Italian meal! Well after lunch we start the marathon of meeting Gina’s fam and friends, it was fun yet overwhelming meeting everyone, because some of them didn’t speak English and they would just feed us more food everywhere we went, and we went to atleast 10 houses.

On the train ride back it was lots of fun, arlan and I reminisced about fun times with WCU soccer, Gina and I told stories from high school, my sister and I talked about what I would do to push her buttons and make her made growing up ( I still do hahah) and we just chatted about random things, so the trip to Alvito was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, I got to see true Italian culture!