So my family left from Venice today while I continued on to my last adventure of my journey, Bologna. Situated between Venezia and Roma I had to make a pit stop in this medieval city known for their great food. To name a few good foods making this region known for the best food in Italy and possibly the world: Bologna, Prosciutto, Parmesan Cheese, Tortellini, and Balsamic Vinegar. I’ll get into the food more a little later. First and foremost, Bologna is a very old town and is home to the first university ever and continues to be a town dominated [View Full Entry]

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So it was our last week, finished 4 finals, and had a day off before our last final. Jordan, Curtis, Laura, and I decided now was our chance to do the Spanish Steps Pub Crawl. For you old folks that don’t know what a pub crawl is, you will know if you fit into this category or not, a pub crawl is when you join a group of people and you go bar hopping throughout the night. In this case, around Rome. Before we left Jordan made a comment that decided his fate for the night, “Badass, that’s how I live [View Full Entry]

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So this last week has been my finals week. I’m very angry that my last week here in Rome will be one full of stress rather than last minute enjoyment. I do at least have ten days without classes to enjoy Italy and to show my family around, which I’m very much looking forward to. To scrounge some last minute enjoyment, Laura and I went around Rome to see some last minute sights in between our finals and instead of spending or afternoons studying we relied on our good friend Mr. Espresso to get us through the long nights of studying [View Full Entry]

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So it has been a while since my last blog… cut me a break… I have been on vacation with la mia familia. Anyway my last big trip of my Italy adventure was to a region to the south called Campania. Saving this trip for when it got warmer we were all excited. We left Saturday morning bright and early and after a bus, metro, and 2 hr train we arrived in Napoli. If you are not familiar with Napoli let me paint you an image. We get off of the train and are stuck in the bustle of people in [View Full Entry]

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So I’m sitting on a train, packed in a cabin, it's 1 am, I got a presentation to make in 9 hrs, and we’re stuck in the middle of a thunderstorm. Sounds terrible huh? Aside from my present accommodations and lack of sleep, it has been an awesome trip. Let me start by saying that it’s Laura’s and mine first trip abroad alone which has been a long time in the making. So about the trip… We arrived at Fiumincino with plenty of time to spare and ran into Simone (my ISC) who we talked to while we waited for our [View Full Entry]

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So I know it has been a while but I have been bogged down with work since I have returned to Rome. It’s a shame that sometimes I associate Rome with work. Regardless, I had an excellent spring break minus a few snags, which are expected in long trips with budget traveling. So let me start this blog, which from the week I had should be of epic proportions. Brace yourself! Athens Leaving from Rome at 11 and losing an hour crossing into Athens we arrived at our hostel, Fivos, at around 2. Quickly dropping off our bags, Jordan, Laura, [View Full Entry]

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14 Stations of the Cross On Friday night @ 9 pm Laura, Jordan, and I walked down to the Colosseo to see the Pope do the 14 Stations of the Cross from the Ancient Temple of Rome and Venus. There were supposedly 20,000 people there and from the looks of it I believe it. We fought our way through the crowd to a spot where we could at least make out the Pope's face and settled in for a ceremony that seemed extremely long but was probably due to the fact that it was in Italian and only understood every other [View Full Entry]

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Wow what an experience. So I went to my first Italian Soccer game at it was amazing. We showed up just as the game was starting and as we walked up to the stadium it started to look like a warzone. There was papers everywhere and empty canisters that held shots of espresso with armeretta. We got into the game easily and were able to find our seats amongst the crazy Italian crowd. We got the more expensive sits in the middle because the end zones house the 2 teams crazy soccer fans and can be somewhat unsafe. On the one [View Full Entry]

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A simple post about a field study for my Archeology class to the Colosseo and Arch of Constantine. For those of you living in a cave, the Colosseo is an ancient amphitheater used to used Gladiatorial games and the Arch of Constantine is an triumphant arch dedicated to Emperor Constantine. [View Full Entry]

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So today Laura and I had two exams to study for but we decided to take a break and discover the park that's down the road from our apartments. This park is massive, filled with Villas, gardens, fountains, hills, and beautifully diverse vegetation. This park was once a private garden to a wealthy family living in Rome back during the Renaissance. Italian gardens are awesome. They aren't simply but done on a large scale with enthusiasm and elegance. They incorporate different levels of fountains, marble statues, staircases, water tricks, and other various decoration. Don't want to go into much detail but [View Full Entry]

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