Rome can be overwhelming, but it can also be incredibly inspiring. This past weekend, I traveled to Roma with my school, Accademia Europea di Firenze. We had an obscenely early wake-up call on Saturday (5am), and were at the train station by 6:15am. The sun hadn't risen by the time we left for Rome! Unfortunately, I missed the sunrise that day, because I immediately passed out on the bus. A short four hours later (we stopped at AutoGrill? Missed that), we had arrived! We spent Saturday morning in the Vatican, and Saturday afternoon in St. Peters. My GST class and I climbed to the top of St. Peters! It was something like 550 steps... definitely my exercise for the weekend :) It was really lovely to see all of the artwork in the Vatican once again. When I visited the Vatican with my family in 2004, I got an unfortunate case of the hiccups while viewing the Sistine Chapel. Keeping with tradition, I got them once again! My hiccups were much quieter this time.
The view from the dome of St. Peters was, well, breathtaking. I mean that in the literal sense, as we'd just climbed up a LOT of steps and were quite out of breath, as well as the metaphorical sense, as it felt unreal to behold such an amazing view full of such lush landscapes, fall foliage, and ancient buildings.
That evening, I went to the Jewish ghetto for dinner and fell asleep early. It was such a long day! Sunday proved to be an even longer day.
We began our day at the Villa Borghese where we were amazed at the sight of Bernini's work. This one sculpture in particular was astounding to me,
Pluto Abducting Persephone, as it was so lifelike.
After the Villa Borghese, we began our Ancient Walk towards the Pantheon. We stopped at the Spanish Steps, and then the Trevi Fountain, taking more pictures than necessary. Right after I snapped the picture to the right, my camera battery died. I'm going to steal pictures from the rest of the day from my roommate.
We later walked to see the Pantheon, which was sadly under massive construction. There is nothing like scaffolding to ruin the beauty of ancient buildings. We briefly stopped by the Roman Forum, but realized we were late for our appointment at the Colosseum. Apparently the latest time to enter was 3:30pm (why so early?), and we got there right at 3:30pm, and the museum guards wouldn't let us enter! After a lengthy phone call, Professor Butler managed to talk our way into the Colosseum.
It was a beautiful day that ended with us watching the sun set as we drove out of Rome.
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