I am currently sitting in my hotel room, I suppose that is mostly a given since that is where I have internet, but here I am because it is raining outside and there is little desire to walk around in the rain.
The first day we explored so much of the city, I am still reeling. We visited the ruins of the Roman city that was buried and then excavated around the 1900's. There are housing neighborhoods, forums, temples, monuments, churches, pillars, little pieces of marble and buildings lying everywhere (I touched a piece!). The way history happened was that after Rome fell and the city was pretty much burned and buried (I could be wrong, history buffs) one of the Popes decided to cut main thoroughfares through the city and even this is incredibly historical. So you have these incredibly old streets and buildings, monuments then underneath the city is even older, like 2800 years old. You can feel the history here, and yet there is a modern city thriving right over top and next to it all.
Unfortunately, there are tourists everywhere but in order to enjoy oneself, it is necessary to overlook the other people there and just enjoy where you are, even if the other Americans make us all look bad.
Next we headed to the Colosseum. The scale of that place is amazing, the thought that this civilization could build such a vast space that has now inspired our arenas. The Colosseum can hold 50,000 people. My entire town is around 17,000 people...uhhh that's a lot of people. It is somewhat difficult to picture what the place once looked like with all of the marble finishes on most of it and all the seats. But I had no idea of the SIZE!
We split off into our individual groups and I decided to head out with a different group of people to mix it up. Two grad students and two 4th yr LAs. I don't know if I have felt to uneducated so many times in one afternoon as I had that day. They are each fountains of information and I am a small puddle. haha. But I feel like I recover with humor. Like let's name famous Italians. My answer... Chef Boyardee, of course!
So seeing the upcoming places with these intelligent eyes opened up my perspective of places a little bit wider. So after the Colosseum, we trekked over to the Circus Maximus, also known as the grassy poop ditch. It is now just a large ditch (100ft across) covered with grass where people take their dogs to shit, awe inspiring, let me tell you.
We moved quickly through that space and on to the Roman baths. The size of this space was surprising too. They had old pieces of the mosaic walls sitting around to give visitors a better understanding of what the walls looked like. We saw walls of brick, but they were once covered in lavish amenities fitting for a Roman.
We walked through part of the city, saw some good ol' fashion Piazzas and just sort of explored our surroundings. We ended up at the museum for the ancient marketplace that had some amazing views and original tile flooring outside. The marketplace is part of the ruins that I was talking about earlier. But the museum had a lot of interesting information like images of what the spaces looked like before and how the uses of the space changed through time, that was the most interesting to me personally.
Next up was the Pantheon. I had to write a 3 page essay about how the Pantheon was like an epic poem... it did not go well and I still do understand what that whole assignment was about. But alas, it was super sweet to be standing in the building itself after hearing about it for a few years.
I saw the famous oculus and the dome and all the works inside of it. It was pretty cool to say that I have been in there, weird to finally be standing in it. I have to admit, the place was pretty cool, even if I don't understand how it relates to an epic poem.
The sun started to set as we walked along the Tiber River back towards the Colosseum for some amazing night shots that I imagine you will all enjoy. The atmosphere made me feel like I has stepped into France or something, the way the river looked and the music that street performers were playing. It was strange and magical all at the same time.
So after an entire day filled with walking and almost no sitting except to eat my first Rome kabab that was served in a pita...? Even thought it was completely delicious, Florence still wins so far. I took two pain pills and felt the pain melt out of my shins and knees and became quite loopy and called it a night a few hours later.
The next day, we went to The Vatican to take a tour around the palace and cathedral which is the largest in the entire world. The words up near the ceiling are actually 7 feet tall, wow! Then, of course we went to the Sistine Chapel and saw the amazing works of Michelangelo, maturely Lindsey (fellow traveler and picture taker of The David) and I counted the number of penises on the ceiling...95 if you were wondering, give or take a few. By the looks of it, I would have thought there were more. So we spend 5-7 very productive minutes in the Sistine Chapel. No pictures were allowed and they had snipers all around the room looking at everyone that even so much as touched their cameras, although one genius (not really) took a FLASH photograph and the men yelling "No Photo!" every two minutes managed to overlook him. Way to go, fellas.
So then we separated once again, like usual and made our way to Piazza de Popoli, which was unspectacular in the rain that had begun to fall ever so slightly. We went up the layers up the hill that over looked the piazza (plaza) and to an overlook of the entire city, there are a lot of domes in Rome. Ha.
Then we walked to the Spanish steps which is a grand staircase, that I imagine holds a lot of people sitting, talking on a nice day. But since yesterday was not a particularly nice day, there were hardly any people and the ones that were there were all standing because the ground was wet. We went back to the hotel early because we were all so incredibly tired from the day before and managed to take a three hour coma before going out to find some dinner and then I worked on my thesis project a little... just a little, and then went to bed.
This morning we headed out of the city to visit the ever-so-famous Villa d'Este... in the rain. It was raining much harder today than it was yesterday and it almost ruined the gardens for most of us. The experience in the garden could have been a pleasant one, except since it was raining, we could not sketch and did not desire to linger very long there. We planned to get there just in time to see the musical fountain but missed in on account of being in the wrong location in the garden. So some of us that particularly wanted to see the fountain play music by water pressure, walked around, then sat in a coffee shop in the Villa and waited for the next show... not so sure it was worth the wait unfortunately.
The 100 fountains some of you might have heard of.
I was expecting some flying water to the beat, but there was just an organ playing music for about 3 minutes. And as we stood there in the rain, watching pretty much nothing, my heart sank. So we headed back to the bus stop and started our somewhat long journey back to Rome.
We made it back to the hotel to learn that the electricity was out so our naps would just have to wait for a little over an hour. But instead of waiting at the hotel in the lobby, they so graciously offered to give us vouchers to get a coffee and a little food at one of there classier hotels, which we took full advantage of. It was nice to sit and relax. And luckily, since I have waterproof shoes and a jacket, I was nice a dry compared to others. =) Now it is just before dinner and everyone else in my room is sleeping while I type away at this ridiculously long blog post.
Tomorrow morning we are heading to GREECE! We are going to stop off in Brindis and take an overnight ferry to Patras and then on to Athens. So all is well on the world tour, we are just struggling with the demanding schedule, but we all knew what was in store when we signed up for this. Maybe in a few weeks we will get the hang of the hustle and bustle of traveling and touring with not much sleep, while trying to balance homework and journaling and sketching. So much fun is in store. Caio!
