Rome

We decided to go to Rome for the weekend. There were about 12 of us and we stayed in two different hostels. I was in the M&J Place with Emily, Piper, Kelsi, Danielle, and Nicole. We had a roommate that was about our age and one that was a really old guy. We got in late on Friday night because the bus took about 3 hours, so we just did the American thing and went to McDonalds, which was delicious. Piper gave me a cheeseburger to buy her a McFlurry with her own money so that she didn’t look like a whale. It didn’t make sense to me but I was fine with it. The next morning we woke up early and started down towards the center of classic Rome. Our hostel was conveniently located next to the central train station which is only about a mile from Rome, so it was an easy walk. We went to the Coliseum first, which was pretty amazing. I got left behind because I did the audio tour because I am a huge nerd. They also had a very cool collection of Roman processional things from around the time of Christ. I knew that the Domus Aurea was very close so I went to find that next. I did a project on the Domus Aurea for my Classics class in college so I was very excited to see it. I was disappointed to find that there is not much written about it in the place that it is because the emperor Nero, who built it, was a huge jerk who pretty much catalyzed the fall of Rome, and there wasn’t much of it left. After that I went over to the Roman forum and attached to a tour group so I could hear tons of stuff about it. We walked through the old palace of Augustine. The coolest fact about this place was that his dining room was absolutely enormous with a moat inside it which surrounded an island with a big tree on it, I hope to put pics up on Facebook soon. But next to this dining hall, there was a giant pit which used to be filled with water and slaves would stage mock naval battles for intermissions from courses. It used to be considered rude to reject food from the emperor so they had a vomitorium right next door where people would go puke and rally. After walking around all these rooms and hearing more about the vestal virgins and everything I made my way over to the museum of the risorgimiento, which is a relatively contemporary museum that was dedicated to a United Italy. There were a ton of cool pictures and a movie that I watched about Italy until World War I, after which this place was built. A lot of Romans hate it because it sticks out above everything else and is bright white. It was pretty interesting with a Tomb to the Unknown Soldier in the front above which is an absolutely enormous Memorial to Vittorio Emmanuele II, who is seated on a giant horse. I walked over to the Teatro Marcello, which looks kind of like the Colisseum but much smaller. Then I walked over the smallest inhabited island in the world, which I was skeptical about, but whatever, it had a gelato shop that I stopped in, but didn’t buy anything because it was so expensive. The other side of the Tiber river was very quaint and had some cool shops to walk around in. I got to enjoy it at my own pace because of my nerdiness at the Coliseum too. Then I walked around some more and saw some cool fountains, my favorite one over there was the Fountain of Pope Paul, which also had a gorgeous view of the city that I have video of that I hope to put up on Facebook or youtube or something soon. Then I took a wrong turn looking for the statue of Garibaldi and walked through a cool little park. I made it to the statue, which also had an amazing view of the city. I was pretty tired by then and wanted to walk back to my hostel, which was now like three miles away. I walked past Vatican City but did not go in because we planned to go the next day. I went back across the river over a cool bridge with statues every twenty feet. Then I stopped by Piazza Navoria which was like a big open air market. I met some kids who were from New York. One kid had gotten hit by a Gypsy and was trying to talk to the police about it. I think that the cops just didn’t want to do anything about it because they were pretending the didn’t speak English, so I stepped in with my sketchy mix of Italian and Spanish to help them out, even the cops didn’t do anything. The next stop was the Parthenon, which I wanted to get an audioguide to but they were holding Mass soon so I had to leave. Then I saw the Palazzo Montecitorio which had a really cool obelisk with a procession of people going to the top wrapped around it. Right about here my camera died so I did not get pictures of the Fontana di Trevi, which you should look up because it is gorgeous. After that I went to the Fontana di Tritone, where the girls saw a really crazy man. Then I went to Piazza della Repubblica, which had a cool fountain that I sat by for a while and rested because it was a really long day of walking. Then I made it back to my hostel and took a little nap because that night we decided to go out on a Roman pub crawl. We met at the Spanish Steps which were really cool then proceeded to the first pub, we got free pizza and beer there, so we took full advantage. I took second place to Hanks in the beer chugging contest so we had a clean Carleton sweep. We went to two more bars after that then ended up at a club. The club was fun but I decided to leave by myself and proceeded to get lost on the streets of Rome for three hours, eventually wandering in at about 3:45 when everyone else was getting back from the club. The next day we woke up at 7 to get over to Vatican city. We were disappointed to find out that the Vatican Museums are closed on Sundays so I will just have to make it down some other weekend. The Vatican is absolutely unreal though, we got there really early so there was almost no one in the piazza when we were there, it has an unbelievable amount of statues and cool fountains in there though. We went inside and my breath was taken away, the amount of art that is jammed inside the main hall of the cathedral is unreal. I think that Pope John Paul is lying in state there but I couldn’t tell if it was wax or not. We stayed for mass which was all in Latin and we had to stand so it wasn’t very exciting. Then we went outside and hung out for a while and the Pope came out his window and gave a blessing in like eight different languages. By then the piazza was full so it was an amazing experience with different groups cheering for every language. After Vatican City we went and so the fortress that the Pope goes to if Rome is under attack, we almost went in but decided not to. After that we went and got lunch/dinner at Hard Rock Café. Kind of lame, but I needed something with big portions and something that wasn’t either pasta or a panino. Then our time in Rome was up and we took the bus home.