Tuesday morning we took a three hour train ride to Rome and hopped on a bus to our hotel. Our hotel, Albergo Sole, is only a two star hotel, but it was great. The bathroom was three times the size of ours here at Santa Chiara, which isn't saying a lot, but it was clean and comfortable and worked perfectly.
After checking in we went straight to St. Peter's. It was beautiful and absolutely huge. We went inside on a tour and took a lot pictures. We then moved onto Hadrian's Mausoleum, the Four River's fountain, and the Pantheon. After that we were cut loose to find dinner, which ended up being in the basement of some building and pretty good. Then we went walking toward Hadrian's Mausoleum to see it at night and right next to it we found an ice rink! So a bunch of us paid 7 euro and went ice skating! I fell down four times and have bruises everywhere, but it was worth it!
The next day we got up and went on another tour. First we stopped by some ruins filled with cats! It was called Torre Argentina and has been turned into a cat sanctuary and are well taken are of. Some of them came up to see us even, they're very tame. It was a really interesting idea! After that we moved onto the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. We didn't go inside as a group, but afterwards we bought tickets and went into Palatine Hill and then the Coloseum. Then we grabbed lunch and went to the Trevi fountain and headed back to the hotel. It sounds like we just jumped from place to place, but we really spent a decent amount of time at all of them, but we just did so much! After taking a nap, we had dinner, gelato, and then bed.
Day three we got up early and went back to the Roman Forum, and those ruins were amazing, before hiking over the the Vatican at 11am. We then spent the next four hours or so wandering the Vatican Museum. It was so big. We saw the Sistene Chapel too, which was different from what I expected. All the paintings seemed much smaller, but I know it was just because they were all so far away. After we finished touring the museum we went back to St. Peter's to go in the crypts. Pope John Paul II's crypt was down there. There were a lot of people kneeling and praying and still mourning him. It was very interesting. Then we went back to our hotel for a quick seminar with Bob and then we went to a place right next door for dinner. We ate a ton of food. I had seafood risotto, roasted lamb, creme bruelee (which was actually awful and nothing like it is back home!), and wine. It was so much fun. I think we sat there for two hours. It was very Italian dinner.
The last full day we got up and once again ran around all over the place. We quickly visited the Pantheon again, a chuch called San Lorenzo, the Spanish Steps, and then jumped on the Metro out to Ostia Antica. Ostia Antica is an entire city of ruins. It was absolutely amazing. I took almost 100 pitures. I could have spent the entire day there, but we were all hungry so we took the Metro back into the city. We grabbed super cheap sandwiches and then split up to take care of some studio homework. After that, we went back to the hotel, napped, and left to go to the ballet! We went to see Sleeping Beauty. It was incredible! We were in the balcony so we couldn't see perfectly, but it was still beautiful. The eight of us who went really enjoyed it.
By the time we got back to our hotel, which was 12:30, we were SO tired that we all agreed to just come home in the morning. So, we got up at 10:00, checked out, and got on the train to come back.
It was an amazingly fast, fun week. I even had a huge blister on my foot to prove it. I would have gone into even more detail, but this is getting extremely long. Ciao!
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