Excursion 4: Roma

Hey everyone!

First off, it's FESTA DELLE DONNE (party of the women) in Italy. So merry FESTA DELLE DONNE to all the women reading this. Especially mom. and Paul : )

Second off, please excuse the typos. I don't have the will-power to proof read these posts.

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Everything I would like to write a blog post about (ie food, my roommates, fashion etc.) also feel like I don't know well enough yet, but I went on another trip, so that will have to suffice for now.


Since I saw so many cool things on this trip , a post recounting everything would be way too long. So, I'll give the abbreviated version with only the best parts.

My trip to Rome started with me waking up at 9:04 on Friday and realizing that there was absolutely no way I would make it to the train station by 9:18. If I weren't in Italy, I probably would have freaked out, but I was, so I went back to bed. I've learned that in Italy time is MUCH less important, and I knew that things would work out. I woke up at 11:00 and headed over to the train station where I found that if you miss your train you can use your ticket for the next train of the same variety. I jumped on the 11:30 to Rome and enjoyed a slow but comfortable ride to Rome (4 hours).

Instead of going through my entire trip cronologically, I'd like to write about my favorite things about Rome as well as a couple of things that I wasn't particularly fond of.


1) Il Colosseo (The Colosseum), Goosebumps: 10

I've been learning that when I see cool things, I can measure their awesomeness by the amount/severity of goosebumps that I get. So, when I finally arrived in Rome, I made a beeline toward the Colosseo (Colosseum), expecting to get at least a 9 on the goosebump scale. The Colosseum has always been the thing I've wanted to see most in Italy. After about a half hour walk (Rome is HUGE), I got my first glimpse.

And I wasn't that impressed. Sure, it's cool, but it seems kind of preverted that such a awesome monument is surrounded by 8 lane highways, decrepit modern buildings, and tons of telephone wires. Needless to say, my first glimpse of Il Colosseo was a 0 on the goosebump scale.

Things changed, however, as I crossed the street and everything modern passed out of sight.

We moved closer and closer to the entrance and other Ancient Roman Ruins came into view. The sun came out lighting up the Colosseum, and as we walked up the huge steps into the arena and caught the first glance of the inside my imagination took off and it was over after that. 10/10 on the goosebump scale. Here are some of my pictures from inside my favorite spot in Roma.



2. Museo del Vaticano (Vatican Museum), Goosebumps: 9 - they were light, but very frequent throughout our visit.

I didn't have high hopes for the Vatican Museum, but we went anyway because one of the girls who came is an Art History Major. I am really glad she came because it was easily the coolest museum I've ever been to. Here are a couple of my favorite pieces. First Apollo Belvedere di Michelangelo Buonarroti, second La Scuola di Atene di Raffaello Sanzio (School of Athens), and finally us reenacting The Laocoon, one of the most famous surviving greek sculptures (and my favorite).




3) The Trevi Fountain, Goosebump scale: 7

Beautiful, intricate, 10 times bigger than I expected, and took over 100 years to sculpt. I left the heads in so you could get some perspective on the size.

4) Pantheon, Goosebumps: none to speak of

Although I didn't get goosebumps from the Pantheon, I thought it was one of the coolest things I saw. The church has been in constant use for almost 2,000 years. It was orignally a temple where one could pray to the major greek/roman gods (there's a place in the wall for each major god), but when the Emperor of Rome choose to make Christianity the religion of the state it was converted to a church. The dome is pretty sweet and it was awesome to try to remember all the greek mythology that we had learned in school as we walked around (there was even a classics major to help us out when we got stuck).

Honorable Mentions:

Piazza San Pietro (especially because it was almost 75 when we were there, see first picture)
Roman Forums
Basilica di San Pietro
Caravaggio Exhibition

There were two things that really bothered me while we were in Rome. The first was the sheer size of the city. There are only two subway lines and the bus system was pretty hectic. It took a really long time to get to some of the places we wanted to see. On the first night we decided to walk home from the restaurant (3 inches max on the map) and it took us over an hour to walk. Yeah, Rome is HUGE.

The thing that bothered me most, though, was the attitude of the Romans. Everytime I bought something I felt like I was being evaluated to determine whether or not I could be ripped-off. At one restaurant we were given bread without asking for it and when we finished, the bread was replaced. We never once asked for bread, yet at the end of the meal we were charged 25 euros (a.k.a. over 40 dollars) for the bread only. The next night at dinner we were given a shady bill and after checking the math I realized we had been overcharged by over 15 euros. My advice to anyone that goes to Rome - be wary whenever you buy anything!!

Overall, Rome is easily my favorite city that I've visited so far. I could spend 2 weeks there and not even scratch the surface. Combine such an awesome city with some fun people and a comfortable hostel and the result is an OUTSTANDING trip. Highly reccomended city to visit!

Tomorrow... Moda Italiana (Italian Fashion) from a terribly uninformed perspective !!

This is how much fun we had in Rome.

Ciao!!