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Published: November 23rd 2009
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So Elyse and I spent our first weekend apart since Europe…seriously the first time we have been apart for more than an hour since we arrived here! So while Elyse spent the weekend relaxing and exploring Venice, I went off to Rome with some other people from our class. Here’s the lowdown on my Roman excursion!!!
The good, the bad and the ugly:
The good- Rome is officially tied with London and Paris as my favorite cities in Europe so far! It has so much history and meshes the ruins of Ancient Rome with the modern city in a beautiful way. The Colesseum was amazing, and the Trevi Fountain by night was truly spectacular (and yes, I threw my coin in!) My favorite part of the trip was my visit to the Borghese Gallery, which is a super exclusive private art collection in a villa on the outskirts of the city. It is reservation only and has a 2 hour time limit, so I felt pretty VIP needless to say. It was the first thing I’ve really done on my own over here without anyone else in a foreign city, so even though I got lost several times on
my way, I finally made it there! It was my favorite art experience in Europe so far (although Paris had some close seconds!) There were tons of Bernini sculptures (who is pretty much my favorite sculptor ever!) I also got to see the first artwork I ever studied in high school art history, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, which is located in this tiny church (another Bernini). We also hit up the National Museum which had some cool mosaics and Roman sculptures, along with Vatican City- which is officially its own country, so it totally got a spot in my shotglass collection. Let me say that I’m pretty sure I got the only Vatican shotglass in all of Rome
The bad- The Pope and I have a score to settle. The Sistine Chapel, only one of the great artistic masterpieces I’ve wanted to see since forever, was unexpectedly closed at the last minute when I was at the Vatican because Mr. Pope (or Benny as I more fondly call him) was holding a special service. I was so bummed! Second bummer of the weekend: I was so busy with all the awesomeness of Rome that I didn’t make
it to the Pantheon or Roman Forum, which I had really wanted to see. Rome is seriously one of those places I feel like I need several months to see, so although I saw lots of amazing things, I was sad I just didn’t have enough time to do all I wanted!
The ugly- So the Barcelona pub crawl fell through last week, so I was pretty excited for a Rome pub crawl this weekend. We had heard that the Spanish Steps was a great pub crawl, so we all signed up for it last week and were excited to meet lots of new people (considering our hostel was not really a super social place to meet new friends). So on Saturday we met the crew at the Spanish Steps and headed over to the first bar for an hour of free drinks and some pizza to fuel up! The bar was really cool, with this underground cave type atmosphere, and we started meeting some people and enjoying our hour of free drinks. We got our pizza and our sweet free t-shirt, and after about an hour we were told the buses were about to get there to take
us to our next bar, so we all finished our drinks and got ready to head out. Then we start hearing that something happened and the crawl is getting cancelled, and there are all these confused people trying to figure out what’s going on and all these people running the pub crawl saying different things and also not knowing what exactly is going on. So basically there is this new law against advertising for pub crawls, even though pub crawls themselves are far from being illegal, but you aren’t allowed to flyer and a lot of crawls are getting shut down for doing so (this is what happened to our Barcelona one too!) So basically we have to wait around this bar for 2 hours (without any more drinks or anything) waiting to get our money back and all these people are getting angry and its utter chaos. Needless to say, things got ugly. People are cussing out the staff for not letting us leave and having a better handle on things, and everyone is bummed that their nights got ruined. So we finally get our money back (2 hours and no drinks later!) and even though we were told
we got to keep our t-shirts, this guy just rips mine out of my hand, and that was it. He then proceeded to yell at me when I nicely asked why I couldn’t keep my shirt. It was ridiculous. So Lizzie and I complain for like 30 minutes to these girls working at the crawl about how rude this guy is and how were upset because some people got to keep their shirts and finally they give us shirts….it was ugly but I prevailed!. So by the time we leave its like 2 am we were just tired, so our last night in Rome was a complete bust and I pretty much figure I’m never meant to do a pub crawl since this is the 2nd week in a row this has happened! Another ugly: While leaving the hostel on Sunday I put a bottle of water in my purse only to find out 3 minutes later is has a leak and now my IPOD is completely soaked. Considering I just got a new computer I lost like 3000 songs and now have about 100 songs to my name. My IPOD is useless and I have lots of long plane/train
rides ahead of me in the next few weeks. I’m pretty much in mourning right now.
So, Rome had its up’s and downs, but it is still an amazing city and one of my favorites. I would love to spend a few weeks there sometime!
The Ten Things I Learned in Rome:
1. The guys dressed up like gladiators outside the Colesseum trying to get you to take pics with them are creepers.
2. Rick Steves is my new best friend and travel buddy. He never led me astray all weekend long! I kept hoping I’d see him walking around so we could hang! Haha
3. Rome pizza=amazing!
4. Bernini is pretty much the coolest artist ever.
5. The Vatican guards are hilarious and super easy going considering their job.
6. Vatican shotglasses DO exist!
7. Pub crawls hate me.
8. The Pope is power tripping but he’s still legit.
9. Elyse and are more inseparable than we thought. After 2 days apart we had a dramatic emotional reunion 😊
10. Rome is awesome and exhausting at the same time…there is just so much to see!!!
Ciao until next time…I’m gonna get Swiss crazy this weekend
(whatever that means!)
P.S. Sorry about the lack of captions....things are extremely crazy right now! I'll try to get some up soon 😊
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Mom
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Now...be nice to the Pope!
Hi Steph! I was ROTFL at your Vatican shotglass and settling a score with the Pope!! I'm sorry that you missed the Sistine Chapel. Guess you'll just have to go back to see all the things you missed. Your pix were gorgeous....breathtaking art! Would have liked to have had some captions to go with the pix. Know that you've been really busy, so I'll be patient and hear the descriptions when you get home. Love, Mom