Monday, June 13, 2011

"maybe if we lounge on the steps we'll look like locals..."

It is very very hard to get up when your alarm goes off at 5 in the morning. Good thing I had already packed my bag and picked out what I was going to wear for the day. We met downstairs at 5:45 and walked to the bus stop. After a quick ride to the train station and some much needed cappuccinos we boarded the train for Rome. It was a very quiet 2-hour ride. Everyone fell asleep immediately! We had to catch this time because the later one was a little too late to accommodate everything we wanted to do today. We made it to Rome and got to have a real breakfast in a really cute cafĂ© near the train station. I had an amazing nutella croissant and another cappuccino (it was necessary). It was really nice to get to sit down and relax for a while. 

I was so excited when I heard our first stop was the Coliseum. I’ve always wanted to go and see for myself exactly what it looked like. We walked there, of course, and I could see the crowd from a mile away. There were some very interesting people dressed up as roman warriors standing around offering themselves for a picture. One in particular entertained us for quite a while…
I loved getting to walk around inside that enormous building. I still can’t believe it was built so long ago and is still standing to tell the story. 

It was really hard to get actual interesting shots because I’ve seen so many pictures of the coliseum I felt like they all started to look the same. I gave up a little early and decided to just enjoy it without stressing about the pictures. We walked to the forum and got an assignment to take the same picture 3 times with 3 different F stops. Things like this are starting to really help me realize how to set my camera for a good shot.
Even though Massimo wanted to hit the Trevi fountain before lunch, we convinced him we would all die if we didn’t eat before. So we ate before. I had the best pesto tortellini and asparagus. I already know I’m going to miss this real Italian food! No one had exchanged their American money for Euros yet so we literally spent the next 3 hours trying to accomplish that. It was actually a nice break once we got to a bank (after trying 2 different ATMs that wouldn’t work) cause we got to rest our feet and have air conditioning YAY.
I FINALLY got to throw a coin in the Trevi fountain! It was fun but the excitement didn’t last too long..

steph me claire 
Once again we convinced Massimo we needed some time to shop before going to the Spanish Steps, so we shopped! But mainly just bought gelato- my new obsession. Sitting on the steps and people watching was so much fun.
me and rachel laughing... really hard

Next we walked to the Pantheon. I still can’t get over the size and beauty of the buildings here.
Riding the subway to the train station was interesting- my first subway ride! We had a quick dinner in the train station and headed home. Ordering was so complicated I felt like we were one big family arguing and rushing each other to order take out! Haha. It was such a long day we are all going straight to bed!

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