Roma Roma

Ciao! Well, Rome was absolutely amazing! I couldn't believe I was in such a monumental place! Not only is it historical, but it just has a completely different feeling than Florence. Florence is SO MUCH SMALLER than Rome, and I never realized it until this weekend. Rome is just much more spread out and "roomy," while Florence is super condensed and smaller. I think that's why tourists and tourist attractions stick out more because it's much smaller than Rome. Anyways! We left VERY EARLY on Friday morning. It was about a four hour bus ride from Florence so we got there around 10:45. The main spots we hit on Friday were: the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon(the picture above)! It was SO AMAZING to be in all of those places, knowing that they were so important in Ancient Rome. The rest of Friday we had off, so we walked around, got some lunch and took a very long nap before eating some delicious Margherita pizza and hanging out later that night. The weather was the first "bad" weather I've experienced since being here. It was rainy and a little chilly almost all weekend. On Saturday, we toured St. Peter's Basilica, an old castle and the Vatican city. It was all SO BEAUTIFUL! Seriously, the artwork was some of the most amazing pieces and monuments I've ever seen. To actually describe these places in words is nearly impossible. It was pretty cool walking through all of these places, especially the Sistine Chapel! And our last day, Sunday, was mostly free time for us all. Some of us that live on Ghibellina walked to a market nearby and enjoyed a delicious lunch that consisted of my favorite kind of panini-buffalo mozarella and tomato, and then a huge scoop of gelato! yum! Then, all the students from API met and we got our final tour, of the Colosseum! It was SO amazing, I couldn't believe I was in there! It is just so crazy to think of all of these places in Rome I got to see that has so much impact, history and meaning to the Italian culture. SO GLAD I got to go there. My roommates and I think that Rome FEELS more like Italy, so we really enjoyed that aspect, even though it's hard to explain. But ultimately, we all like living in Florence and once we were on our way home from Rome, it was a comforting feeling knowing we were going "home to Florence." Right now I'm just in between classes, working on some homework and running errands-per normal. Gotta finish my Italian homework now, ciao!