Jen's Jewelry Blog: My Trip to Europe

The TV screen shows that we are currently somewhere over France. I still haven’t realized that I’m in Europe yet. So far I have slept 5 hours and the flight attendants are serving breakfast. It is a croissant, a banana, granola bar, and orange juice. Overall I like breakfast better than dinner. So I am going to read my book for a while.
Two hours later our plane landed in Rome or Roma as it’s called here. I was looking forward to going through customs and getting a stamp in my passport, but apparently the European Union does not stamp passports so I was disappointed. It took 2 long hours for everyone to get their luggage. When we finally got our luggage, we walked outside the airport and met our delegation manager, LeAndrea. She seems really nice. We then took our first bus ride in Roma. Our bus is bright green and our bus drivers name is Bern but we can call him Ben. So we drove towards our restaurant for lunch. The bus can’t navigate all the way to the restaurant so we had to walk there. We walked right by the Coliseum. It hit me that we were in Rome at that moment. For lunch, we had pasta in a strange sauce. For main course we had June Fish and a salad with vinaigrette. For dessert we had something like pudding with chocolate sauce. I like all the meal but the pasta. After lunch, we met our tour guide. He was an archeologist who knew what he was talking about. He took us through the Coliseum and the Roman Forum. The guide was really interesting to listen to. We entered the Coliseum through the emperor’s entrance. He told us how the original marble was striped away when the Roman Empire fell. The Coliseum was impressive but with the marble it could have been overwhelming. After the Coliseum, we walked past the Arch of Constantine and Arch of Titus. Then we took a tour of the Roman Forum. We say the remains of the places and the other important buildings. We got to see two temples that had survived. They were spared destruction because they were changed into Catholic churches when the empire fell. The guide told us showed us a church with two doors one that you could walk up the steps and enter and another that was 10 ft. off the ground. This second door was built because over time the Forum was filled with debris so the ground level was higher.
After the tour, we had free time. Jackie, Hailey, Demi, and I wandered around the Forum. We say the spot where Caesar was buried, and stopped at one of Roma’s many fountains to fill our water bottles. After that we had to wander back and meet the group so we could walk to dinner. This meal had three courses. The first was mussels with a sauce. It made me want to throw up. For the main dish, we had two past dishes: one for vegetarians and one for the rest of us. Both dishes were really good, and made up for the first dish. The dessert was Flum, tasteless Jell-O like thing with a caramel sauce.
After one long day we arrive at the hotel, I got to room with Jackie, and Hailey. But when we got to the room, we realized we had 2 beds for three people. I drew the short straw so I got to move in with Demi and Hailey Ross.