Roma

Monday, November 23, 2009

On Friday night, my hard drive crashed, causing me to lose all of my paper research, photos, music, and the small ounce of sanity I had left. But I don’t want to talk about my total computer breakdown, or my temporarily lost (and extremely important) permit to stay forms, or even the fact that this weekend, the stars aligned against me to guarantee that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. It’s Monday morning and a new week, so I want to talk about the fun I had in Rome.

Saturday morning, Sarah and I woke early and met the IES group at Piazza Gramsci. We arrived in Rome, dropped off our bags at the same hotel in which we stayed on our very first night in Italy, and went to the Vatican Museum. Unfortunately, the Sistine Chapel was closed for unknown reasons, but I did get to see Raphael's "The School of Athens" and I have determined to return to Rome early the day before my flight leaves to see Michelangelo's ceiling.

We had the afternoon to ourselves and my group wandered to St. Peter’s beautiful Basilica and then climbed the Spanish Steps at sunset. As I looked out on the pink and orange Roman skyline, I was finally able to forget about my computer and the Sistine Chapel and my research papers. Finally, for the first time in a long time, I was calm and content and happy to be exactly where I was at that moment.

We headed back to the hotel and met the larger group for dinner at Papi Papi, a cute restaurant with “authentic Roman food.” After stuffing ourselves silly, (as is customary of IES Siena students) we spent the night in a Piazza flanked by 12 bars where we (or maybe just I) danced away our cares.

Sunday morning, we met our tour guide for a walking tour of the Forum. In three and a half hours, our enthusiastic guide took us through the ruins of past palaces and St. Clements basilica, a church built on top of a 4^th century basilica that was built on top of two buildings from the 1^st and 2^nd centuries. The tour was really interesting but ran long, leaving us with an hour and a half before having to catch our bus home. Determined to see as much as I could, I dropped into the Coliseum before hopping on the metro to find Trevi Fountain. Really low on time, Sarah, Mari, and I literally ran to the fountain, threw in our coins, and ran back to the metro. We ran out of our subway stop, sprinted past the hotel to a panini shop, bought lunch, and arrived in the Grand Hotel Palantino a mere 5 minutes late.

My only complaint about Rome is that I didn't have nearly enough time to take it all in.