Roaming Roma!!!

Buena Sera! I am back in sunny Swansea (not) after a wonderful whirlwind of a weekend in Roma. (Let's see how many alliterations I can use throughout this blog...) To say the least, Rome was amazing.

To say more...

Thursday morning Alison and I caught a taxi at 5 am to the train station. Our train was to Reading and from Reading we took another train to Gatwick Airport. This went smoothly and we made the trains on time. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, both of us were pretty nervous about flying on the budget airlines because there are plenty of unpleasantries that can be associated with flying on them. We flew out on Easyjet with zero hiccups and made really good timing into Fiumicino. From the airport we had a car service from our hostel pick us up which was super convenient and made for quite a lovely ride into Rome. The car dropped us off on some side alley road and my immediate thought was that this guy was just going to leave us in the middle of some random Rome neighborhood and we were going to be wandering around for an hour trying to figure out where to go. However, it turns out he dropped us off perfectly the hostel was just not labeled the best and the name was not really visible and also the Italian version of the name. We stayed at Orsa Maggiore which I would highly reccommend. We had a private room overlooking a courtyard and we were perfectly located. Everything was about a 15 minute walk, except for the Colleseo which was just a little further. We walked everywhere so I came home with new blisters, but it was good to walk off the gelato, pizza and pasta!

Thursday Night
We just looked around our area and ate some gelato, of course. Our area was really nice, in Trastevere, and was a perfect starting place for exploring Rome. We had dinner at Dar Poeta which was delicious. It was really close to our hostel and almost all of the other patrons had their guidebooks, like me. We went early enough that it wasn't busy and we each got a pizza (we had leftovers for lunch the next day.) We also had a nutella and ricotta calzone which was like eating heaven in a pocket. Nutella is delicious and all of us Americans are going to come home obsessed. After our lovely meal we were pretty exhausted, having been up for over 18 hours and traveling for nine so we decided to go to bed semi-early after walking along the river and seeing the buildings and castles lit up. As I am writing this I am remembering also that we went to Piazza Navona where there are two huge fountains by Bernini and it was really amazing to see those. There were lots of little paintings and people selling things in the piazza too and we saw this almost everywhere we went.

Looking good after a long day, Dar Poeta!

Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Walking under the moon, very close to our hostel!

Friday
We got up and had a little quaint breakfast in our hostel, toast with cheese and jam is very big here and it is slowly growing on me. After this we planned to go to the TI (Tourist Information) to get our Roma Passes and then go to the Vatican. Our walk was along the river once again, Rome is quite beautiful. The walk up to St Peters Basilica is beautiful and lined with columns. In case you visit... there are people who constantly come up to you while you wait in line to get in (to get in is free) trying to get you to join their tours and tell you that the line takes two hours... the line to get in took at most 15 minutes so they try to catch you right away. That was interesting to see but made us feel well traveled to know better. Anyway, the inside was so beautiful and overwhelming.

Walking up to the Piazza and Basilica 

Michelangelo's dome, top of Bernini's baldichin

Beautiful

Things were not labeled very well and I didn't get an audio guide which I really enjoy doing because otherwise I am completely clueless. So all I can really tell you is that is was amazing and huge and beautiful.

At this point we got some sustenance before joining the next line on the other side to get into the Vatican Museums. There are about 15 museums... give or take. Each equally impressive and containing a multitude of paintings and artifacts. I am taking a Egyptian Art and Architecture course here so I am really loving getting to see all of the things we are talking about in class and the Egypt museum here was really amazing. Also, every ceiling was painted and it was just so much to take in. I got an audio guide here, Alison didn't, so I told her some of the things. I am really glad I got that because otherwise I would not have appreciated it as much. We went into the Sistene Chapel of course, but, I hate to say that after seeing pretty much everything else in the museums (this was our second to last stop in the museums) I was not as impressed. Everything else seemed to me just as spectacular but it was of course amazing as well. We saw The Tranfiguration, Raphael's last painting before he died, which was really neat. There was just so many things to see it was nearly impossible to gather the importance and significance behind everything. That being said, the museums were one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Michelangelo's inspiration

Also, I can't seem to find my pictures of the rest of the museums but more photos from the trip are on my facebook album! So after the Vatican we went back to our hostel mid afternoon to refuel and give our feet a quick break before heading back out. This afternoon we went to Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps which are probably in the top 5 of things that we saw. It was just pure Rome, minus the millions of tourists.

My favorite fountain! I threw in two coins... one to return to Rome, the second to fall in love with an Italian man, the third was to marry the Italian but I was feeling stingy.

Spanish Steps!

Also, it is really funny because in Rome pedestrians just did whatever they wanted and didn't have a care in the world. In Swansea cars definitely have the right away but in Rome people just walked in streets and the vespas and cars had to navigate around them. It was pretty nice, also we got to use our normal driving on the right side so that was convenient for us to not get hit. Another thing that was semi disappointing was the amount of English used... everyone spoke english. Alison and I had been practicing our Italian for weeks (we had a vocabulary of about ten words: grazie, scusi, pizza, pasta, delicioso, preggo, buena sera, gelato...). We did get asked things in Italian a few times which we were excited about because we have also been practicing blending in, which mainly means not talking so loud and wearing lots of layers and scarves. Everyone looks so put together, children here dress better than me on my best day. Anyway, making progress. Back to the day, sorry for the sidetracking! I am pretty sure we then just explored some more and found a place to eat dinner and fell asleep.

Saturday
Today was our tour of Ancient Rome! I love love loved this day. We had perfect weather, dress and jacket. After a pastry at a little bakery in the Jewish Ghetto we continued on to the Roman Forums. We wandered the grounds with all of the ruins which was both magical and eerie; a whole other world before ours. The amount of buildings still standing is impressive and it was just an experience that can't be replicated. It was also a huge area that Ancient Rome stood on.

One of my favorite buildings, Il Vittoriano in Piazza Venezia

Remains of the Forums 

Of course we made our way to the Colosseo, I am running out of adjectives here so sorry for repetition. The colosseum is just so crazy because it is so huge and beautiful. It was fun to see the typical shot of it on the postcards but going inside was also really neat. I am sure people have heard but Emperor Trajan supposedly brought in 11,000 animals to be slaughtered and 10,000 gladiators for one celebration... nice memories. It can hold in between 50,000-70,000 people, it was built so long ago without all of our modern technology.

Inside of the Colleseo

We humans can be pretty creative... So after the tour of Ancient Rome, I had made reservations for Museo Berghese so we made it over to Villa Berghese which was the farthest away from us and also situated at the top of a huge hill. Of course I read the reservation wrong so we arrived very early but it turned out to be okay because we had a nice lunch with a very flirty old Italian man who wooed us and then charged us for the bread which we didn't eat! Reminder: They charge you for bread (ridiculous) and they add things to your bills so if you don't look carefully you will end up paying for things you did not eat! Very irritating but part of being a tourist unfortunately. The Berghese Gallery was very pretty but once again they did not have an audio tour so I am not even sure of all that we saw, lots of works by Carvaggio, Bernini, Botticelli, and Raphael. I wish I had taken an art appreciation course before this because I am sure it would have been very beneficial.

Museo e Galleria Berghese

It was a lot of information and visuals during this day. We ended up back in a popular piazza where we had pizza bianca (basically like a thinner focaccia) and sat in the middle of the square, just fitting right in with the locals. We also had a drink at a cute little wine bar and sat and people watched. A very enjoyable evening to a very lovely day. At this point both of us were getting quite sad to leave and also stressing out about our journey back... We got take out from Dar Poetta and ate our half of the calzone in our hostel overlooking the courtyard and listening to italian live music. This was one of my favorite parts and made me so thankful to be able to have the opportunity to do this and to travel. I cannot imagine having a better semester abroad and it still just the beginning. I am loving each and every single day of this time here.

Sunday
Entirely devoted to travel so I won't go over too many details, only minor hiccups, but it did take us over twelve hours to get back to Swansea. Long day but worth the days in Rome undoubtedly.

And so the whirlwind weekend ended and we went back to life in Swansea, which while a bit sad about leaving Rome, I love Swansea and being here. Last night a group of us went to the Black Boy, a local not-so-politically-correct, pub. It was so fun to just sit around and hang out. I am looking forward to many more nights of this. We have a super group and we are slowly adding more locals, mostly our flatmates who are so much fun.

Tomorrow twelve of us are headed to Berlin! There have been some travel alerts... ie they have found two bomb-y things on the rail tracks and the air control personnel are threatening to walkout... so fingers crossed that all goes well! We are going to the Light Festival which looks amazing! Pictures to come and more writing!

Once again, I apologize for the length of this blog! Feel free to read and skip around or just look at the photos!

Cheers! Julia