Weekend in Rome

Journal entries from my weekend in Rome:

Our Mercedes-Benz bus......

12 Sett 2008 – Halfway there
We are out in the countryside of Italy; it’s so green and beautiful! Tons of trees and hills everywhere mountains in front of us.. It makes me feel more at home. The homes out here are amazing. They’re all so old, like in the city, but they have much more character. Ristorante stop!

We’ve travelled about an hour and a half and just stopped for a snack. The gas stations here are so funny–instead of having just a little shop with your basic candy bars and sodas, they have a full on restaurant, cafe, and grocery store in one building. We all piled off our buses (3 buses of about 45 kids) and invaded this place. It was absolute chaos!

There is a kid on the bus who has his music on so loud I can hear it over my own headphones! He’s listening to some hip-hop that has the same exact beat throughout the whole song….what a moron! He’ll be deaf by the time he’s 30 if he keeps listening to his tunes at that volume. Time to invest in some noise-cancelling headphones.

Spanish Steps

Later that day…

Oh man! We went on a walking tour of Rome. So many cool places to see..so much history! We went to the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain (which was pretty cool but ridiculously crowded with tourists), the Pantheon (also amazing, more on this one later) and we saw some fantastic architecture. The hotel is apparently a 4-star hotel. It’s pretty nice, big room, aaawwwesome shower.

Okay, back to the journal entries later. Now I’ll explain the sites we saw with some pictures!

Our first stop on the tour was the Spanish Steps. They were fully funded by the French, but they are a path from the Holy See (yes, SEE, not sea) to the Spanish Embassy.. thus, they are the Spanish Steps.

I climbed to the top of the 138 steps and was pretty stoked to see my first bigger view of Rome. Since we arrived on the bus all I saw was the streets and the tall buildings.. but couldn’t get a bigger picture of what Rome really looked like. A lot of the other students compared Rome to New York City–minus the skyscrapers of course. I’ve never been to NYC so I can’t really have a legit opinion, but I’m not too sure why they compared the two cities… I would imagine that they are nothing alike. Maybe the “big city” atmosphere? (Side note: my laptop battery was getting low, so I decided to reach for the cord to plug it in …reachhh…almost…WHAM! My chair fell over and I smacked the solid floor rather hard. That’ll leave a bruise. Laptop ..plugged in.) 

Me and the view from the top of the Spanish Steps

Next we went to the Trevi Fountain. It’s basically a giant fountain built into the side of a building. Tons of fantastic sculpture. There were way too many tourists there to really enjoy the fountain.. Oh well. The Pantheon was way cooler anyway!

The Pantheon is amazing. It has these fantastic columns that are over 2000 years old and were brought over by boat from Egypt. If I remember correctly they are 45 feet tall with a diameter of 3ft. The actual structure was built in 125 AD. At the top of the dome, there is an oculous that is 29ft wide!!! It kept raining..so it rained inside. It was kinda weird but the guy who designed the Pantheon apparently had reasoning behind it. Oh, and just FYI, Raphael is buried in there. No big deal. I got to see Raphael’s grave.

Pantheon - "Temple of all the gods"

After the tour we went back to our hotel and rested for a little while. Katie, Aneisa and I were in one room, so naturally we ended up venturing out together to grab a quick lunch and find something to do. We decided to head towards the Roman ruins and go inside and walk around….but when we got there (after staring at the

Roman ruins

map for a good 20 minutes to try and find the entrance), we found out that we had to pay to go in. Both of our tour books of Italy (including the one and only Rick Steve’s), said that the entrance to the old Roman forums was free! We asked the ticket people and they said they changed it in May.. bummer. We walked around the forums outside the fences and read through a bit of my tour book to get the main ideas. We could see the ruins just as well as anyone inside probably could have! It all seemed so unreal.. the old worn columns and buildings..

On Friday night, Katie, Aneisa and I went to a restaurant that our program people recommended to us called La Carbonara in Campo de’ Fiori Square–about 3 minutes walk from our hotel. It rained a little on our walk there but otherwise it was pretty nice out so we decided to take an undercover outside table. We got a table, ordered our food and water (you have to pay for water here…..) and got our bread…. Then WHAM!!! HUGE RAIN STORM! (see below) ..It was windy and ridiculous! Some of the umbrellas blew over and took some tables and dishes with them. The picture below is from the entrance of the restaurant. We stood there with the rest of the people from outside just waiting for the customers inside to finish eating. In the end, our food was fantastic (I had Ravioli Spinaci… aka Spinach Ravioli) and we had some great conversation!

La Carbonara in the rain..

On Saturday we got up early again and hopped on the bus. We arrived in the Vatican City….The Piazza is gigantic–it’s probably the biggest one I’ve seen. St. Peter’s Basilica is…even more incredible. It’s absolutely enormous from the outside.. then you walk in…and it’s breathtaking. (It is, in fact, the largest basilica in the world.) When I walked up the stairs to the entrance I was already in awe..then I walked in! Man.. I thought it was pretty cool in pictures and my history books, but seeing it in person is an entirely different experience. When our tour guide pointed to my right to show us where Michelangelo’s Pietá is displayed, I felt speechless and .. Yeah I know I’m totally cheesey, but guys!!! I was SO excited to see Pietá!! In PERSON! In any case, the basilica was huge and cool and I got to see a lot of art that was in my art history books in just one place, ..and I also learned a lot more about its history and architecture.

St. Peter's Basilica -- Look closely at the people on the steps of the basilica; it's pretty big, eh?!

Michelangelo’s Pieta

Me in St. Peter's

After the basilica we went to this lame fortress that I don’t even remember the name of….. Then we had free time! I chose to head over to the Sistine Chapel (duh, who wouldn’t?!) where I got to see even MORE art history come to life. I’ll be honest, the Sistine Chapel didn’t blow me away–I was a bit irritated by the guards loudly.. and sternly.. telling everyone to be quiet and “NO PEECTURES!”..It was really crowded but I tried to enjoy it. There was so much to look! I think I was more excited to Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement”, and Perugino’s and Boticelli’s frescos than I was to see the famous Creation fresco, (God giving life to Adam). The wall frescos were much bigger than I imagined.. Hmm. I think you just have to see it yourself

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement

Finally! The last day, Sunday, we went to the Coliseum. I couldn’t stop thinking about Gladiator. I asked our tour guide how accurate that movie was to history and his response was a silly little old man laugh,.. and a “not one bit!” Then he continued to break down all of history comparing it to the movie.. Oi!

In any case, the Coliseum has some pretty insane history. It’s all a bit bloody and gruesome, but I must admit, the structure is pretty amazing and monumental for having been built so long ago. It’s really unfortunate that the marble was stolen for other various projects–I can’t even imagine how beautiful it was before it was ruined!

The Coliseum, where countless men and animals were murdered for human entertainment..

And that’s that!