Although the last entry was for my last
weekend trip for the semester, this one is for my last trip I took before my
semester ended. On Wednesday, the dancers had their last class for the semester
(with Rita thank goodness. It was a wonderful class and a lot of the dancers
were crying at the end) which ended at 11am in the morning. Since we had nothing
in our schedules planned until Thursday at 6pm, I decided to take advantage of
the time by finally going back to Rome and completing my list of “places to see
before mom comes”.
After class, I rushed a shower, grabbed my
pre-packed things, and quickly walked down the hill to the bus stop.
Unfortunately it was a holiday (Liberation Day) so the bus I had planned to
take didn’t come and I had to take a bus that only dropped me off half-way. I
then quickly walked to the station, only stopping for a kebab to go (the guy
who works there was so nice. When he saw that I was rushing, he asked the
person ahead of me in line if it would be okay if he filled my order first and
she said yes), and I boarded the train with a few minutes to spare.
When I reached Rome, it was almost 3pm and I
walked down to the metro, bought my ticket, and headed towards the Colosseum. Once
there, I decided that the line at the Colosseum was too long and so I would go
do Palantine Hill first. Although I ended up walking a round about way to reach
it, the ticket line proved to wonderfully short and I headed up the hill.
I really enjoyed some of the first sites I
saw in that area such as the ruins of an old temple, a giant tree at then end
of an old path, and a museum filled with really wonderful marble statues that I
adored. However, the rest of the ruins in that area and the gardens proved to
be less exciting (though the view from the gardens was amazing) and I
eventually left it to head down the hill to the other sites. I had planned to do
the Colosseum next, but since my walk down lead me straight into the middle of
it, I ended up walking the Forum next.
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| Palantine Hill |
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| Palantine Hill |
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| Statue in Palantine Museum |
For the most part, I wasn’t amazed by the
forum; there was so little left of most of the buildings that it was much more
impressive (and clear as to what things were) to view the entire site from
above than to walk through it. However, I did find a few things enjoyable such
as the Temple of Saturnalia (so big!), a large church tower with circles of
color in every color of the rainbow, and a museum with beautiful old glass
bowls that I found while trying to find the exit to Capitol Hill. I never did
find that exit, so instead I headed back through the Forum to reach the
Colosseum.
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| Roman Forum |
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| Roman Forum museum |
By the time I reached the Colosseum, the line
had died down a bit but was still long enough that having bought my ticket
somewhere else definitely shortened the wait. Once inside, I was definitely
impressed. I quickly walked up the stairs to get the better view and walked
around the second floor of the stadium, looking down. I don’t know if it was
the scale or the shape or the history or what, but something in the building
was definitely awe-inspiring. I walked around most of the second floor for fun
and around most of the ground floor getting lost looking for the bathrooms (one
of the worst public toilets I have ever been in. Women’s toilets are supposed
to have a place to sit!) and then for the exit though I eventually found both.
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| Colosseum |
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| Inside the Colosseum |
At that point, I had spent around 2.5 hours
walking around the sites and I was dead tired. But I was so close to Capitol
Hill that I couldn’t resist walking there. The buildings and the statues were
impressive in scale, but it didn’t turn out to be my favorite designs ever and
the view over the Forum wasn’t as amazing as I had been told (I found a better
one within the sites actually).
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| Capitol Hill |
From there, I decided to try reaching the
Pantheon before it closed, but only made it about halfway before giving up.
Instead, I turned in the other direction and walked to the Trevi fountain. I
ended up enjoying the design more than anticipated (so much water! :D ) and I
threw a coin in, but the huge amount of other tourists quickly pushed me out of
the area.
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| Trevi Fountain |
From there I then walked to the Fountain of
Triton (which I loved. Such a great design!) where I then took the metro to the
Spanish Steps.
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| Fountain of Triton |
I will admit, when I first saw the steps, I
thought for sure that these were not the right steps. I mean, there were a TON
of bright pink flowers on them that I definitely didn’t remember from the
pictures I had seen. However, after comparing the steps to the picture in my
guidebook, I concluded that I was indeed in the right place and that the
flowers were apparently for a fashion show.
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| Spanish Steps |
So I walked up the stairs to chill
for a bit and to decide where I was going to eat for dinner. I knew I had to
get Tiramisú (I had been told by Monica that that was something had to do), but I had no other
preferences and was not sure where a ton of restaurants would be (also, all of the
restaurants around the steps were extremely expensive).
After consulting my guidebook, I decided to
go to Piazza della Repubblica (remember the church Santa Maria degli Angeli?
That is the piazza it is in) and eat nearby at Est! Est! Est!, a cheap and old
pizza place. Although, when I arrived, I was told that I would have to wait 50
minutes to get in (real time: 30 minutes, though some really kind old American
men offered to let me in early and sit at their table. However, this proved
unnecessary since my table was ready less than 30 seconds later), the wait was
definitely worth it for this food. I can honestly say that this pizza was the
best pizza I’ve had in Italy (and wonderfully thicker in crust too) and the
tiramisú was the best that I have had outside of the villa.
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| Pizza at Est! Est! Est! |
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| Tiramisú at Est! Est! Est! |
Feeling wonderfully sated, I walked from the
piazza to my hostel without incident (well…I did go in the wrong direction when
I started, but after getting on the right track nothing went wrong!). Once
there, the receptionists turned out to be women who spoke unaccented English,
and I checked in. My room was shared with four other girls of about my age,
though only one of them was there sleeping when I came in (the other two showed
up much later in the night after I had gone to bed…they weren’t too quiet
unfortunately). I then put my stuff away and went to bed (the beds were fine,
though a bit squeaky).
In the morning, I got up at 6:20am in order
to get to St. Peter’s Basilica as soon as it opened. I ended up arriving there
30 minutes after since checking out had taken longer than expected (I needed to
pay in cash which I didn’t have so I had to look for an ATM and the first one I
found didn’t work), but there was only an incredibly short line so this was no
problem.
Inside the church, I was impressed by the
size and the number of large statues they had, but was otherwise not excited by
the Basilica (neither the design nor the subjects of the art were too
interesting). I still wondered around taking pictures for a bit (and I
discovered a passageway behind two statues that some of the priests and guards
were going down. So cool!). I then exited the church to go around the side to
climb up into the dome. Although the 551 (supposedly…I only counted 507 steps
coming down) were not so much fun with my knee, I enjoyed seeing the art on the
inside of the dome much more close up (not as incredible as the art in the
Florence Duomo though) and the view of Rome spreading out in 360 degrees from
the top of the church (though not the most impressive view I’ve seen).
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| Inside the Basilica |
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| Inside the Basilica |
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| View from the top |
After leaving the church, I headed back
through the metro to the Colosseum since it was the nearest metro stop to the
Jewish ghetto. Although I disliked the length of the walk, the many different
views of Rome that I saw (including an island in the middle of the river with
huge buildings on it) were wonderful. When I reached the Synagogue I was
disappointed to learn that the building was closed April 26th (no
idea why), and, after taking some pictures of the outside, I started to walk to
the Pantheon. This was a little quicker and I ended up reaching the site with
lots of time to spare…which ended up being a bad thing since I walked around
the entire site in less than 15 minutes. I will admit, this was probably my
most disappointing experience in Rome. I had really expected it to be a well-preserved
old temple that I could walk through. I hadn’t realized that most of it was
well preserved because it had been turned into a church. An ugly church.
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| Synagogue |
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| Pantheon |
After that, it was around 11am and I needed
to find someplace where could purchase food on the go. Around the Pantheon and
the supposedly amazing gelato shop I had been told to visit there were only
restaurants, so I walked back in the direction I had came from and found a shop
where I bought a chicken sandwich. I still had a good 30 minutes before I
needed to start eating, so I walked back to the Pantheon to chill and people
watch and then ended up sitting in a piazza near the gelato shop to eat.
And then I went to get dessert. AND IT WAS
AMAZING! I can hands down say that this was the best gelato I have ever had
anywhere. Inside the shop there were over 50 flavors of gelato and it was
incredibly hard to choose (there was an entire area dedicated to different
types of chocolate and I also saw a Mars bar flavored gelato that I almost
ended up buying). However, I ended up picking raspberry and profiteroles
flavors and this was a fantastic choice. The raspberry flavor obviously had
real raspberries in it (I could feel the seeds in the gelato) and it was not
overly sweet, and the profiteroles flavor tasted just like real profiteroles
and had little puffs of pastry in it so that you could chew. So amazing <3 I
would go back to Rome just for that gelato.
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| My superb gelato! |
While eating my stupendous gelato I walked to
the Fountain of Triton to take the metro back to Termini (along the way, I was
stopped twice in less then 10 seconds by two different groups of people asking
me directions. Luckily, I had been to both sites and knew which direction to
point them!). At Termini, I then waited for a bit and then got on the train
back to Arezzo where I am now.
The semester is now almost over and soon I
will be traveling with Mom and then coming back to the States. I’m not sure if
I can quite believe it.
Ciao!
