I'm back from spending 10 days in Italy for my spring break! I haven't had the time or energy to blog so the complete account of my adventure will probably come in multiple entries at random times. Bear with me!
Thursday (February 28):
After arriving in Rome and only getting a little lost on the quest to find our hostel, three girls on the trip and I met my friend Matt, he goes to Madison but is studying abroad in Rome, and he gave us a little tour of the area. We started at the Trevi Fountain, which is stunning! And even more so
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| Matt and me at the Pantheon |
because it was
sunny and about 60 degrees! I must have gotten used to dreary London because I had forgotten about warm sunny days. After that we went to the Pantheon. All I could think was "how'd they do that?!", I really don't understand how thousands of years ago they could build a massive building like that! We went to the Spanish Steps and Largo Argentina aka the cat sanctuary. For some reason stray cats are drawn to this area of ruins, and they are
everywhere. It's actually disgusting (and sad). We saw one cat with 3 legs, one missing an eye and another with part of its skull showing! Ugh I'm getting grossed out just writing about it. We also saw the Vittoriano, I'm not really sure what its
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| 150 Flavors of Gelato! |
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purpose is but it's stunning nonetheless. Aside from seeing these iconic places, I'd have to say one of the best parts of the day was going to a gelato shop that had 150 flavors of gelato! It was overwhelming, but in a good way! I got amaretto and chocolate, and I instantly fell in love. Later we went to the Piazza Navona to meet up with our other friend, Katie, who is also studying in Rome. (Katie, Matt and I worked/lived in Liz Waters together) In this Piazza there are 3 fountains (one really massive and spectacular one) and during the day there are stands with people selling water color paintings of sites in the city.
After this long day of touring, we headed over to Trastevere for dinner. I had pizza with sausage and
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| Sausage and mushroom pizza |
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mushrooms with red house wine. Both were aaaamazing!
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| Throwing in our coins at the Trevi Fountain |
Friday (March 1-holy cow it's already March!)
Friday we went to Campo Di Fiori for some shopping! First we had lunch at a little restaurant in the square. I had lasagna, one was green with artichokes and ham (at least, I think it was ham) and the other was just normal lasagna. It was so amazing! (this is a reoccurring theme) After a little bartering I ended up getting souvenirs for a few friends back home, success! After lunch and shopping, we of course had to get gelato. We spent the rest of the day exploring Rome. We hiked the Spanish Steps and then walked over to Piazza Popolo, which is less special than I thought it would be but still cool! We spent the rest of the night hanging out at the Trevi Fountain drinking wine and waiting for the sun to go down so we could pictures of it all lit up. We had a lot of fun people watching and just hanging out! Down time was limited on this vacation.
Saturday (March 2)
Saturday my friend Brittany and I headed to the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum while the rest of the group went to the Vatican. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! Aside
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| Colosseum |
from becoming increasingly annoyed with street vendors that harass you at every turn, Rome is amazing! (On the trip I learned two key Italian phrases: No thank you and F--- off!) It was really awesome to stand in the Colosseum and think about all the history and all the people who attended the..uh..activities...that took place there. All I could say was "wow!!". Palatine hill provided great views of Rome, but it was probably my least favorite of the three places. The Roman Forum was really awesome! Even though it's mostly just ruins, it's still really great. Again, it's crazy to try to put yourself back in the time when Rome was in its prime and think of everything that took place right
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| Roman Forum |
where you are standing! Or maybe that's the history major in me!
We ran into a bit of trouble when trying to go visit my friends again that night. Bus tickets are
technically required if you want to use public transit, but I was under the impression that the bus police rarely enforce this rule. So when we saw the bus police get on our bus I knew we just needed to hop off and walk away! However, the policeman knew this trick as well and blocked us from leaving. We tried to play dumb (finally! the language barrier works in our favor!) when they demanded our tickets and I.D.s, but when they threatened to take us to the station I decided to hand over my license. (Didn't want to call my mom from an Italian jail) We were suppose to be charged 50 euro for riding without a ticket (100 euro if you don't have 50 on you-which I didn't), but after acting completely confused for 15 minutes the man only charged us each 30 euro. Not a great experience at the time, but I can laugh about it now and it made for an entertaining story!
After that debacle we went to dinner where I, of course, had pizza and wine for dinner and yes, it was amazing!
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| Sarah, Brittany, me and Grace with gelato |
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| Trevi Fountain |
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| Sarah and me at the Spanish Steps |
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| Yep, you read that right. |
Florence was gorgeous! Our hostel was very cute and we were located very close to everything that we wanted to see. We went to the Duomo (a giant church), Piazzale Michelangelo (my favorite) and the pizza place where the Jersey Shore cast worked! We of course ate a lot of pizza and drank a lot of wine.
