Rome
Hey Everyone
Let me first apologize for neglecting to write for so long. Needless to say things here have been busy and weeks are slipping away without me noticing!
A few weekends ago I went to Rome with some friends from my program. We left on Thursday night and got to Rome around 11pm. Just walking from the bus stop to our hotel we passed an amazing fountain all lit up and these two buildings curved around a turn around. We had a large group of people going, eighteen, so they had us moved from the hostel we had originally booked to a “hotel� for the same price. I slept in a room with 5 other people, and the room was filled pretty much solid with beds. There was a tiny walkway (less than a foot wide) between the beds to get to our bathroom. It also had a weird smell…but it was only 50 euro for four nights per person, so we really didn’t mind all that much. Those are the kind of prices you can get when you are a college student who really doesn’t care what the room is like.
That night we went out to a little café and sat outside to eat ice cream (gelato in Italian) and drink wine. It was pretty cold at night, more severe than Barcelona, but all of the cafes had heaters, so even though we were sitting outside it wasn’t bad. That is one thing that I loved about Rome, pretty much every single restaurant in the city has a seating area outside. The streets are lined with little umbrellas and pretty tablecloths. Some of the streets even had lights hanging over them at night, like you see in the movies. The roads in Rome are much wider than those in Barcelona, and the whole city has an airy feeling, plus none of the buildings are very tall. But there are still those cute little areas where you walk on a cobblestone road and don’t even realize that cars are allowed to drive on it.
The next day we were up pretty early and went to see the coliseum. The building is so imposing; it is just gigantic—on the outside anyway. The inside seems surprisingly small because the center area where the gladiators used to fight is smaller than the area of a football field. The arena held less people as well, about 60,000. Obviously the building isn’t in perfect condition, some parts have been rebuilt or reinforced and some parts are just missing. But it is a ruin after all, and it was very cool to be inside of such an old and magnificent structure.
After the coliseum we went to an area called the Roman forum, which used to be a large city center back in the height of the Roman Empire. But now it is hard to tell where buildings used to stand. There are some foundations, and bases of walls, columns and a few stairs. It is a large area and it was essentially a large park because there was grass growing up around these old walls. At the top of the hill there was also a great view of the city and a pretty fountain. There are fountains pretty much everywhere in Rome, and I love it!
Next we walked up to Capitol Hill and saw some more cool buildings. It is a bit hard to describe how interesting it is without pictures and without you having been there. Every building is different, and any old building is just so interesting simply because it is old. The style of architecture is different in each one depending on the time period. Plus there are statues all over the city. Obelisks are really popular, which the Romans took from Egypt (literally hauled them across the Mediterranean) and then put crosses on top of them to make them Christian. One interesting thing about the Roman Empire is its stance towards Christianity. At one point in time it had all of its pagan gods, but around 300 AD Christianity started to catch on and the emperor at the time was afraid that it might be mighty enough of a force to take down the empire, so instead of fighting it he decided to do away with the old gods and make Catholicism the only religion allowed in the empire. So needless to say a lot of the art and statues have religious references, but they are usually split between old gods and the new god, with some of the emperors thrown in for good measure.
The thing about the gelato in Italy is that it is so good! There are shops on basically every corner, and each one has about 20 different flavors to choose from. My favorites were coffee and tiramisu (which I also tried as a desert later that day). After lunch we saw the Trevi fountain, which is this gigantic fountain/building with all of these cool sculptures coming out of it. You are supposed to throw a coin in it over your shoulder, and if you make a wish at the same time it is supposed to come true. The fountain was cool, but very crowded there were people pretty much everywhere. We went back later at night, and it was lit up and much more relaxing.
After the fountain we found this church with a religious alter kind of thing in it. Pretty much there were a series of rooms filled with bones of dead monks, people who had died of famine or war. But the bones were arranged into arches and patterns. The ceiling was decorated in these patterns that were so pretty, until you realized which bone in the body made up each shape, and then they became very morbid. There were even some full skeletons in there with some skin still on them. Apparently it is a weird kind of tribute from this order of monks to Christianity, but it was one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. There were bones of 4,000 dead people in these rooms, and it was just a massive encounter with death at every turn. But defiantly something I would never miss, because where in the U. S. could anyone get away with that without getting arrested? But in Rome it is just a part of history that needs to be preserved.
It was definitely a high energy tripe we pretty much left our hotel in the morning and walked until we went back home to change for dinner at seven. It is certainly not a relaxing vacation; it is more of a history lesson and trying to pack in as many things as possible. Because you could be there for three weeks and still never see everything that there is to see in the city. The nice thing about the city was that it was compact. We never had to walk too far to get to the next thing, although maybe my views of this are skewed because I have become more used to walking in Barcelona.
Let me just mention the weather we had for a moment. Three out of our four days were absolutely gorgeous, 65 and sunny all day! We were walking around in jeans and T-shirts completely comfortable and I even got sun burned a little. It was just so pleasant to sit in the sun and soak it up, because it hasn’t been that warm in Barcelona yet.
We ate dinner at this little hole in the wall restaurant which had great Italian food, and a fun atmosphere, plus cheap wine. We spent about three hours at dinner and had such a great time there that we ended up eating there the next night as well. The guy who owned the place loved us so it was fun. One thing that I didn’t expect about Rome is that pretty much everyone speaks English. It’s not that difficult to get around simply because you can ask pretty much anyone for directions.
The next day we went to the Vatican. There was a big ceremony going on in Saint Peters Square (which is actually circular) and we got to see the Pope from very far away, but also on gigantic movie screens. The pope is pretty high tech actually, there were speakers everywhere so we could hear the music and speeches, even if we couldn’t understand them because they were in Italian. After getting bored of the people speaking to the Pope in another language we headed over to the Vatican museum, which is really cool. There was an Egyptian exhibit with all of their crazy statues that are part human and part animal. There were also all kinds of Roman statues of gods and important people. It was kind of fun to look at them, some were so detailed and looked so real that it just amazed me that it was possible to carve them out of marble.
The Sistine chapel is part of the Vatican Museum, but to get there we walked through room after room of paintings and tapestries and statues. My favorite room had gigantic maps of Europe painted on the wall. There was also a room with a ton of globes in it, which was pretty cool too. The Sistine chapel is pretty amazing. First of all the room is huge and the entire surface is painted. Obviously the ceiling is the most famous part, done by Michelangelo in five years. But he also painted the back wall of the church of three hundred angels and men fighting with this bright blue background. Just under the ceiling another artist painted scenes from the bible all around the room. And below that there are painted curtains that reach all the way to the ground. So pretty much everything but the floor is painted. One thing that surprised me are the intense colors that are in the room. It was restored about five years ago, which revealed colors more brilliant than anyone had guessed. Apparently it changed art historians perspectives on Michelangelo’s work as a whole. Prior to the restoration they had thought that he had valued the lines in a painting more than color, but after seeing this it is hard to deny that color didn’t play a huge role in his design. The Sistine chapel is where the conclaves are held when they elect a new pope, because it is tucked away inside of these other buildings so well that it is easy to secure.
Then we went to St Peters Basilica. The Basilica was huge and nearly the entire ceiling is covered in gold. It is hard to describe the size of these buildings, everyone is just huge, they don’t make them like this anymore. There are columns inside with a twenty foot diameter, and not just one or two columns, there have to be at least fifty, just to keep this thing up. The inside was a mixture of marble and paintings and windows. There was a huge alter that had some cool twisty columns, and of course the grave of St Peter.
Eventually we left and headed to the Spanish steps. We never quite figured out why they are called that, someone mentioned that a Spanish architect designed them, so maybe that is why. These steps are mostly important for a functional purpose, they connect a high road to a low road, so that people can walk up and down without having to go far out of their way. But it is a popular place for Romans to just sit and hang out. There were a ton of people in the area so it was fun to people watch. There was one street that was so filled with people that you couldn’t see the ground, it was funny to watch these cars inch slowly through the crowd and emerge on the other side of the street after ten minutes of fighting through a sea of people.
After the steps we made our way to the Pantheon, which is a huge circular room with a great dome that has a hole in the center of the ceiling. Back in the day the early astronomers used to study the stars through the top. It also had some kind of significance in connection with the solstices. Again huge, marble, overwhelming size, but I liked it best because of its scientific relevance. It was built in 100 AD and is still standing—the architecture is so advanced for the time. When looking at these buildings that last for centuries it almost makes me feel like our culture has digressed since that point. Instead of huge buildings devoted to science we now have huge buildings devoted to football, just not quite the same thing (sorry to all you football fans). And there is no way those stadiums will be standing for as long as these things. It really is crazy how old some of these things are though, most of the architecture in Barcelona popped up around 1900, even the older stuff is only from the middle ages 1400’s at the oldest. But the Roman buildings date anywhere from BC to present day, the range is just gigantic.
The next day we just roamed around the city. We saw a few plazas and squares and ate pizza on the steps of this great Obelisk surrounded by fountains. We also made it to the river and walked along that for a while. We saw a circular castle, a mausoleum, a huge government building, among other things. We had coffee and canoles at a small café. I had never had a canole before, and it was good. Apparently they are more common in the south of Italy, but we managed to find them after searching for about a half hour for them.
The next day was also our last day in Rome �. We decided to forgo more city scoping and headed out to the country side to check out some catacombs. We never really made it down to the catacombs because they were closed for lunch during our time there, but we still had a great day. There were four of us girls and we just wandered down these peaceful streets talking for a couple hours. There were still old ruins there, and old churches that were falling down. It was completely different than Rome, I almost felt that I was in Ireland because the fields were so green. There were the cutest little villas we just wanted to rent one and stay in Rome forever! But of course that couldn’t happen because we had to catch our plane back to Barcelona.
So that is pretty much what happened on my trip, it was jam packed with sight seeing, but at the same time we spent a few days leisurely walking around just trying to see where Rome would take us. And even on the busy days we took the time to sit down for a relaxing lunch and re-charge our batteries. So the moral of the story is that Rome is amazing, but you have to get used to a little walking, and knowing that you are a tourist.
I hope you all enjoy this massive entry about my amazing weekend in Rome!
Kelsey