February 9, 2010 Roman Holiday

Our actual "Traveling" to Rome was a nightmare. Our flight in Milan left at 6 so we had to leave the night before from Torino and sleep next to the train station waiting for a bus to the airport for about 4 hours. Its funny how so quickly you adapt to being a homeless person. Before i knew it i was one of them, talking a feeble amount of Italian and looking for food and change. We ended up talking to this taxi driver for a while about American music. Apparently, we are both fans of the Electric Light Orchestra, which i thought would never be of any value to me. When we got to Rome, we stayed in this 10$ hostel called Carlito's way which is basically a group dorm. I got to know a couple turkish people, a peruvian, an ecuadorian, some Spaniards and some other American people. The dorm was really great for the price that we paid. We went to see the Trevi Fountain, The Colloseum, the Roman Forum, Palantine Hill, The Vatican, the Vatican Museum (The Sistine Chapel), the sculpture of the ecstasy of St. Teresa, the pantheon, and the Spanish steps. We found this really cool night walk, and we traveled through the city seeing all the sights lit up at night. The Trevi fountain and the pantheon were especially spectacular. We had gotten a tip that near the four rivers fountain their are some extremely gifted struggling artists, so we stopped by just to see if any of them were worthy of our time, and as a matter of fact their was one artist in particular who was absolutely incredible. He did all of his work with spray paint and he had to be one of the best artists i have ever seen. He was the farthest thing from professional, he had a pig tail and paint covered overalls and he was selling his art for 10e, but he was absolutely incredible. The night walk was a lot of fun because their are a ton of street performers out every night trying to gain exposure, and they really add to the atmosphere. Their was everything from mimes to world class singers. On Sunday night, we really wanted to watch the superbowl so we walked about 2 miles to find an Irish Pub. Its somewhat dangerous to walk the streets of Rome at 2 or 3 o clock in the morning, but what the criminal element doesn't know is that i carry next to nothing on my person and that they would actually lose money (opportunity cost) in the time that it would take to rob/pickpocket me. Well anyway we found a pub and we stuck around for a while before leaving in the 3rd quarter so that we get some sleep. I would say that my favorite part of Rome was the Vatican. I heard someone say something to this effect, and i think it embodies exactly how i felt: "To call the inside of the Vatican vast would be like calling God smart." I was absolutely dumbstruck by the gigantic size of the pillars and the art, and John and I climbed to the top of the Vatican and that had to be the best view i have seen. (One of the pictures below is of me on top of the vatican). On Monday, we went to the Vatican Museum and saw the Sistine chapel. It really was amazing, and we got a steep discount because we are students. That night we hopped on a bus to the Rome (Bergamo) airport and then flew back to Milan where we met up with that same taxi driver (haha) and headed home to Torino. Today I had my first Italian Cuisine class. We learned how to make a 3 course meal that was really great.



My computer is about to die so i will continue later