Rome and Vatican City

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January 19th 2009

Published: January 19th 2009

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Aufdenkamp

Lunch

I taught Nati how to eat tomatoes like apples!

Thanksgiving was a pretty tough day for most of us at the Fundacion. It was weird because we knew it was Thanksgiving, but all of the shops were open and everyone still had class. However, the Fundacion made a really nice Thanksgiving meal for us and it was great to get to have the turkey, stuffing, and mash potatoes!

After the dinner, Nati and I went to Rome together. We left on Thursday evening and slept, once again, in the airport in Madrid. It was really cool because, although I definitely wanted to go, going to Rome and Vatican City has been a life dream of Nati's. She was so cute and so excited about it! The only bummer was that it rained the majority of the weekend, so we were wet and a little bit cold. Oh well, we had a good time anyway.

We arrived Friday morning and got into the city and found our hostel. We were able to shower and then start our day of exploring. We started by going to a supermarket and getting some bread, cheese, and tomatoes for lunch. Then we started to walk towards the area with a lot of museums,

Grey Skies

but it started raining so hard that we ended up ducking into an old basilica. It was very pretty and we spent some time in there as we waited out the rain. Once it let up some, we kept walking and found some museums to explore. After the museums we went to see the outside of the colosseum and check its hours for the next day. There are men standing outside of the colosseum dressed in cheesy gladiator costumes. They came up to us, told us that we HAD to take pictures with a "gladiator" to show everyone, and then told us to give them 10 euro. We kind of figured something of the sort was coming, but we told him no and then he was yelling at us about how stingy we were. But we kept walking and went to Trevi Fountain, where another man came and was trying to have us take pictures because he was a "real Italian." He may have been a real Italian, but he was also a very real drunk. Oh, sometimes it's so fun being a tourist! We ended the evening with pasta and gnochi in a cute little restaurant and headed to

Gardens

bed.

The following morning we got up pretty early and headed to Vatican City. We walked around the plaza in front of the Basilica and then went inside. Wow, what a huge area. It was rather overwhelming inside of the building and with the amount of people that were there. But it was also very pretty and cool to see. After the Vatican we went to the Colosseum and actually went inside. It was absolutely awesome. That was definitely my favorite part of the trip. It is still so well preserved for being so old, and we spent a long time looking at all of the different mechanisms that were used for the different games and shows. After the Colosseum we headed towards the river and walked around for a while in a part of town that has more shops and restaurants, etc. We ate at a little pizza place and then headed towards the Pantheon. We also found a pretty wonderful crepe stand along the way! We then headed back to the hostel.

Sunday morning we got up, got ready, and headed to the airport to fly back to Madrid. It had been an overall great experience