Blogs from Rome, Lazio, Italy, Europe - page 272

Buon giorno i miei amici! I hope everyone had a fantastic 4th of July, and everyone is as excited as I am that Italy won the semifinals and is playing tonight vs. France. We are so excited here. In fact, we were supposed to go see Madama Butterfly in Rome tonight but the show was cancelled and moved to tomorrow so that everyone can watch the game. Only in Italy! The past few days have been a blur of rehearsing, coaching, gelato... Last night my friends decided that instead of taking the bus back, we would walk and find out hotel. That didn't really happen. We andered around for a few hours and finally ended up taking a taxi to get us home. It's amazing though how there are so many hidden treasures here. For instance ... read more

Okay, I have no idea what the title has to do with this entry but whatever. Also, we aren't actually in Rome anymore but I guess I should go ahead and catch that up. Our first full day in Rome was long. Our hotel sucked. Horrible. Trust me, Hotel Texas was nothing like home, but thats a story we are hoping to soon forget so time to move on. After getting that situation taken care of we went to the Spanish Steps. The monument part at the top of the steps was under scaffolding, so that kind of sucked. There were a TON of tourists all over the place. It was out of control. Its a really nice area though. We walked and sweated down the steps and then checked out the water in the fountain ... read more

Geo: 41.8955, 12.4823Today we got up early to go to Musei Vaticani in hopes of viewing the Vatican Museum and ultimately the Sistine Chapel. As we voyaged out, the lack of people and the forewarning that today was Epiphany led us to draw the correct conclusion that the museum was closed. We continued on, however, and finding this to be true, made our way into St. Peter's Square. Soon bells started ringing, an organ played, and Pope Benedict ? appeared before us on a giant TV screen. Here we were, unexpectedly, in the middle of a special mass to celebrate Ephiphany. Barb and Jeannette were especially moved by the experience. We stayed through the consecration part of the service, and were amazed by the quality of Vatican sound and TV. Leaving the masses (no pun intended), ... read more

So, I finally got this site to work here. For those of you who missed my first email, Iàll repost it on the blog. Today is the fourth of July, which means nothing over here. I have been doing my program now for 4 days and I am already exhausted. Waking up to sing at 8:30am is not my usual scene, but I'm doing it with no complaints. Last night was awesome. Me and a group of ladies went to the Spanish Steps for dinner. We ate at a delicious restaurant called Alla Rampa where we ate pastas, priochiuto (sp?), homem,ade tiramisù (which I realized means "pick me up"), and drank a lot of vino. Now for those of you who have never been to Italy, let me tell you something that differs from our culture ... read more

So after falling asleep at about four in the afternoon yesterday and waking up around 9 today we were ready to actually do some stuff. First priority was to get a room for tonight which we did, all be it for 29 euro. Then we decided to try and find a room for tomorrow night and the night after, which we did after spending an hour on the bus and then meeting a Quebecois woman who was lost like us but spoke Italian so we found the hostel and it turns out you can't book ahead because 150 people check out a day so we are just going to head back tomorrow and we should be good to go. We also checked out Saint Peter's square, or oval, which is huge, we are going to go ... read more