New Year's Eve 2014

I realize it's slightly beyond pathetic to post this entry almost a year after it happened...but I'm so close to having fully documented our adventures.  Yesterday, Spencer made a comment about me loving to start projects but being slow to finish them, I guess this is Exhibit A...or B...or C...  Anyway, here we go.

After leaving the monastery on Tuesday morning (New Year’s Eve), we headed to one last hilltop city called Orvieto. The GPS kept guiding us on all these windy scenic routes (to the point where I was getting car sick and Spencer was jokingly shouting "Hey Italians learn how to make a straight road!"). The majority of the time on these roads we could see the Motorway (freeway) nearby. But we kept following the GPS anyway; after all, she always got us where we needed to go. On our way to Rome, we figured out it was because the GPS was set on "avoid toll roads". We think this setting ultimately made for a lot of long-cuts in the middle of the countryside during our 4 days with the car, but after paying one €7.00 toll to get to Rome, I think we're glad.

 

So back to Orvieto, we got to the town and walked around and took pictures for a bit. The highlight of the town is their cathedral, but I think we are both cathedraled out so we weren't too excited about this. We did decide to get ourselves one last Tuscany meal for lunch. We walked around and found a place with a good TripAdvisor rating and decided to eat there. Spencer got a pasta with wild boar sauce, I had a pesto and tomato pasta, and we split a Truffle (mushroom) bruschetta, they all tasted delicious!! Hooray for at least ONE good pasta meal, 5th time's the charm.

This cathedral looked very similar to the cathedral in Siena

After Orvieto, we got on the Motorway and drove straight to Rome. I had booked our rental car to be dropped off in the heart of Rome at the train station, so poor Spencer had to navigate the absolutely insane Roman traffic. It took us a while to figure out where to drop the car off, but we figured it out eventually. After dropping the car off we went to our hotel, which was a breath of fresh air. It had a kitchen! And a comfy bed! Since we had a kitchen, we decided to go buy some groceries (we were pretty excited to have a nice bowl of cold cereal).

Around 10 we set out for the New Years Eve celebration in Rome. The main crowd of people was grouped near the Colosseum, so we could see the laser show countdown projected on the walls of the Colosseum and the fireworks shot above it. It was really fun counting down with everybody (in Italian of course) and watching the fireworks, mostly just because it's such a once in a lifetime opportunity. 

The less glamorous parts were the alcohol being spilled down my pants and shoes, the cigarette smokers in every direction, and the constant stream of guys trying to sell us flashing 2014 pins or bottles of alcohol. Once the clock struck midnight, everyone uncorked their alcohol to celebrate. The lady next to us offered us some, which we declined. I told Spencer it was probably just like Martinellis because they were giving it to their young kid, but we still said no. A minute later she insisted on giving me a cup. I tried to ask her if it was non-alcoholic, I think she was trying to tell me it was, but it was all lost in translation. I ended up slowly dumping it on the ground when they weren't looking.

There were a couple other people there with us.