Rome June 2007

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Sooo here we go! A year of planning this trip to Rome with the 11 girls from the latin class and we're finally going! It all started with a crazy idea of going to Rome since we had been studying Latin and all inscriptions on the buildings for so long... And our wonderful Latin teacher just said "yeah sure, that's a great idea!" Camera, ticket, passport, money and bikini all packed. And well, some more clothes as well. We found out that for seeing all ancient buildings we won't be let in unless we have clothes that will cover our shoulders and knees...

We flew out from Stockholm-Skavsta Airport in Sweden and landed at Rome Champino Airport a couple of hours later. After being awake since 2am most of us were pretty tired and didn't enjoy the flight that much...







After leaving our baggage at the hotel and changed some clothes (it was +37 degrees C in Rome, and let's just say it was not at all that hot in Sweden when we left, so all of us were dressed for colder weather...) we went out for our first city walk.



We were all pretty amused by the water you could get from anywhere in the streets. Free and clean!



The first sight of something... old! The Forum of Augustus was the first thing we got our eyes on and we were standing there for ages just looking at the piles of stone. 2000 years old though! If we only knew how many piles of old stone we would see the following days we might not have stayed there for so long...

The Forum of Augustus

The ground level at the time.







Next place we were off to was the Pantheon. A building built for 7 gods but later turned into a christian church and therefore it was not knocked to the ground by people trying to hide tracks of the old gods. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the building (but of course some of us didn't "see" the signs...)

The Phanteon






I'll try not to repeat myself, but let's just say most of the days went by pretty much the same way. We got up around 7, ate breakfast (eew disgusting chocolate stuff or jam on a sandwich) then being 11 girls we'd run around trying to find clothes in our messy rooms and then choosing the clothes that would give us the best-looking tan.

The Roman Forum (Forum Romanum)

View from near by hill. To the right is the Temple of Saturn, and the few colonns to the left are what remains of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus.



The Arch of Septimus Severus. View from the hill and from the other side (with me in white standing under it!) Can't really see on pictures that the buildings are so big but jeez, they're absolutely HUGE!





Me in a Roman buildning. (Yes there's a fence and you're probably not supposed to walk in there, but the sign on the fence only said "Do not lean against the fence"...) Pretty cool that this was once a house...


This is the place where they think Julius Caesar was stabbed to death 15th March 44 BC...


This is the Temple of Antonuis and Faustina.


Temple of Vesta. Used to be a round building where the Vestals (young virgin priestesses) kept a holy fire alive in the middle. The Roman people believed that if the fire was put out a disaster would strike the empire.


The Vestals lived in these houses up on a hill. From there they could see the whole forum.


The Palatine

The Palatine is one of the hills Rome is built on, and during the empire rich and important people had their houses on this hill.




This is a picture of Augustus' house at the Palatine. It still has some of the wall decorating left.



Augustus also had this arena, I suppose that if you're the emperor you're supposed to be able to watch some brutal killing from your living room window...



Other Famous Buildings

The Marcus Aurelius Colonn (I think this is his at least... Hmm they all look a bit the same hehe!) Just imagine how long time it would take to make that pattern... And it goes around from the bottom to the top like a diary of what the emperor did during his years of power.



The Cathedral of St Peter
Was just enormous! We walked all the way up to the top and the view was just fantastic, but to be honest I'm not sure it was worth it walking 1000 steps in a 0.5 m swirly stair case (leaning to the side and without any windows to supply fresh air) and no way to turn back and walk down again. Had to reach the top to be able to choose the stairs going down again. It actually freaked me out a bit. Not doing that again.



Have more pictures from the Cathedral, but need to get them from my laptop first... Missed all pictures from Colosseum as well for some reason. Have no idea what happend to those, and why I don't have them uploaded. (Will get sorted asap!)

And we weren't only looking at old buildings... We had some fun too!














Sooo, guess I'll be updating this soon, but it was an awesome trip and I'd love to go travelling again with my crazy ladies!

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