Rossome

So. Back again, are we? March has been quite a month. The last time I left you, I had just been getting back from Barcelona. Since then, I haven't done any international travel, just a lot of travel within Italy. I had a week of CRAZY INTENSE midterms and then it was Spring Break. My family came out to Rome for Spring break and we had a nice time. After my family left, I went to Bologna and met some of my fraternity brothers who are studying abroad. Our hostel was incredible. It was actually a bed and breakfast, and in all honesty it was better than my current apartment and cheaper on a per-night basis. Goodness. Bologna is very cool. Bologna was soooo much colder than Rome. Its two hours north of Lazio and in ... read more

The past two weeks have been a fantastic adventure. Come with me, will you? Alright, so, last weekend, February 6 to 7, I was in Venice, enjoying the beginning of Carnevale. We took the 6:45 am train to Venice on Saturday morning, to get there in time for the night's festivities. We got there around 10:30 am. The train ride was fine, if early, but my headphones were broken, so that put a big damper on things. I was traveling with my roommate, Matt, our friend, Jeff, and his friends, Colleen, Jordan, Becky and Susan. Venice is a fantastic city made of tightly packed buildings with canals snaking through the streets. The weather our first day was gray and a little rainy all day, but hey it was still nice. We got off the train, and ... read more

So, here I am around the end of week 2 in Rome. I know I haven't updated in a while but here goes nothing, right? After the walking tours from my last entry, we went to Todi, a medieval hill town in Umbria. It was a very cloudy day, but everything in the town was nice. There was this huge staircase to get up to the top of the town, and at the top there was a park with a big stone in it which was a September 11th memorial. In the town, there was a nice church which had all these cool separate chapels. Todi is the Hershey of Italy, so I can presume, because Baci chocolate is based out of there. I had my first Italian cappuccino in a cafe in Todi, and it ... read more

Forgotten things to put in past entries: The first night I was here, there was this police escort that went screaming through an intersection, followed by an A.S. Roma bus, which was carrying the Roma soccer team. The market that is down the street from us is (Oh man I can't remember again. I'll update this later). Today, I went on a long walking tour through Roma, and saw many things: Piazza del Popolo (which is very close to the Temple campus), the Spanish Steps (which is in the VERY NICE neighborhood that I stayed in with my family 4 years ago), got amazing pizza, got a protection bracelet from a Buddhist monk, went to the Colosseo, took the metro to the Trevi Fountain, and saw the Capuchin Bone Church. Everything was crazy. My feet are ... read more

So I have been in Rome for about a day and a half now, and it is great! The flight was good, I flew Alitalia out of Newark. I sat next to an Italian teenager who was wearing emo clothes and listening to her iPod shuffle at a really loud volume. The guy in front of me was a professional sleeper who had a really crazy sleeping mask with holsters on the side for earplugs. He reclined his seat all the way about ten minutes into the flight and left it that way the whole time. I didn't sleep at all and I listened to Patton Oswalt, SModcast, and Gnarls Barkley for most of the flight. I put the Hangover on on my iPod, and the girl next to me took her headphones out, and asked ... read more

It is the night before my flight, and except for a few things to leave until tomorrow, I am all packed up. I am rather excited about my upcoming semester in Rome and I will try to write as much as I can. I spent about ten days in Italy 4 years ago, and I'll be excited to get back. It is a gorgeous country, and I still can't believe I'm about to spend four months there. I'll keep the blog updated as things progress.... read more