Beautiful, Enchanting, Wonderful ROME - Day 1

Ah. Rome, Rome, Rome.
My favorite (and third and final) stop of our first ten day trip.

We arrived in Rome on February 3rd from Siena around 7:15PM and took a bus from the train station directly to our hotel. One major bonus that came from our stint in Rome was our accomodations while visiting. Apparently, students from the previous semester stayed in a different hotel, one that the administrative assistant is convinced gave them bed bugs, which followed all the way back to the Villa here in Genoa. BIG aftermath as you can imagine. From their demise comes our favor. Due to this unfortunate happening, our administrative assistant booked us in one classy, fancy hotel. Albergo Santa Chiara definitely played a role in our excellent Rome experience!! Directly behind our hotel (and in full view from our room) was the Pantheon. Yeah. :)

Albergo Santa Chiara

That evening, we settled in our fabulous room (by the way....it SO pays off to be married while traveling on these trips; you and your hubby get SUPER nice rooms ALONE while everyone else has to share like back in the college dorm days!!! YAY!!) then headed out to find a relatively cheap, local bite to eat. It was fairly close to the hotel and turned out to be pretty good!! They had a deal where you got an appetizer, entree, and your drink for 11 euros. Not bad, not bad. I opted for the spaghetti, which really wasn't that bad, but the hubby got lasagna and it was delicious!!! Of course afterwards, we got some gelato at a gelateria that was close by the hotel and on our walk home. Shortly after, it was to bed so that we could be up bright and early to discover Roma!!!!

Me and my love, with Bernhard, the professor for the Genoa program.

Day 1 in Roma:

For our first day in Rome, we weren't to meet with our guest professor, Terry Kirk until 1PM that day. So very nice of our professors to give us some free time!! So, being incredibly exhausted from going, going, going.....Jonny and I took advantage of the morning and slept in. ;) We finally awoke and decided to hit the ground running by making a visit to none other than THE Colosseum. For whatever reason, I have NO idea why, a visit to the Colosseum as a class was actually NOT on our itenirary for our time spent in Rome...I know. I was floored.

Anywho, we actually ended up taking the long walk there, so it by the time we arrived, we only had the chance to walk around the outside of the Colosseum but couldn't spare the time to buy tickets and go in. We spent about 30 or so minutes taking pictures before we met up with a Derrick, Heather N., Lura, Heather B., Po, Amy, and Harrison to grab lunch and head to our meeting place, Piazza Del Campidoglio, for our time with Professor Kirk.

Professor Terry Kirk

Upon meeting up with the rest of the group we then spent the remainder of the afternoon and into the late evening with Professor Kirk. We started at Piazza del Campidoglio, by Michelangelo, a center with several government buildings and a present day area where people gather to sit and read, have lunch, or just enjoy the day and people watch. It dates back to 1535, and was very pretty.

Piazza Del Campidoglio

Afterwards, we headed to Piazza Venezia/Palazzo Venezia.It was actually originally built for one of the popes, Paulus II, in the mid to late 15th century. It's located in central Rome, and also includes a Museum which houses galleries of art from the early Christian era up to the Renaissance.

Piazza Del Quirinale

From the piazza we headed to Chiesa Di Sant'Andrea Del Quirinale. This church was very small in comparison to previous churches that we have seen so far. It had a distinct circular, cylinder shape and the atmosphere was very intimate. We spent about half an hour inside while Professor Kirk shared some background information with us, we took photographs, and the the arch kids sketched a bit. What the church lacked (assuming some might think so) in size it made up for in detail. Beautiful.

From there it was to Chiesa Di San Carlino Alle Quattro Fontane. This church was a tad bit bigger in size but didn't stand out to me as much in detail. Standing on a corner of an intersection, Quattro Fontane refers to the four corner fountains at this intersection. This church was larger in size although similar in shape (outwardly appearance gave off a vertical shape) this church extended more horizontally giving a broader leeway for other rooms and areas to the church. We toured through these spaces, one of which was a crypt area that was very cool. We also spent some time photographing and sketching, but my favorite part of this church was the interior ceiling, which include a clean, oval shaped picture of a symbolic white dove. It was so very, very pretty!!! From the second church we visited we headed to Palazzo Barberini. We didn't spend much time here and began by getting a good deal of historical background from Professor Kirk on the outside and then did a very quick walkthrough. We had a lot on our agenda with Professor Kirk and towards the end of the day, we had to pick up the pace to finish up by dinner time.

The dove at Chiesa di San Carlino

Crypts at Palazzo Barberini

Next it was off to one more church, Chiesa Di Santa Susanna. Another older Roman church; very pretty and very detailed. We ended up skipping a couple of things on our itinerary for the day because we just couldn't squeeze it all in!! We had 2 places to hit at this point and it was close to 7PM. Both were fairly famous, so there was no skipping out on either one. The first was the famous Trevi Fountain. I remember this site mostly from studying about it in school and seeing it in history books. We ended up getting there at nightfall, so it was a real treat to see it all lit up at night. There were tons of people there; you could tell it didn't matter the time of day, that this was always a hot spot for tourists. We took some photographs, stuck to Roman tradition and tossed some pennies over our backs for good luck, then we were off to our last stop of the day. We ended the afternoon well at Scalinata Di Trinita Dei Monti, otherwise known as the Spanish steps. They are the longest and widest staircase in all of Europe and contains 138 steps. A beautiful, elaborately exteriorated church hails at the very top. It was originally split between the Spanish and the French being that both had to do with it's contstruction, and remains a controversy even today between the two. The two groups of course, joke more than anything about it today. Professor Kirk was very passionate about these stairs. I mean, very passionate. He knew a lot of history about them and firmly believed that if you took them just right, you could simply glide and ascend the stairs feeling every moment surge through your body. Whew. Thankfully I was able to capture his love for the Spanish Steps to share with all of you.

Video 1

Enjoy.

More to come!!

Chiesa di Santa Susanna

The Trevi Fountain

The Spanish Steps

After we finally finished up, it was pretty late, so we were all pretty hungry. Professor Kirk had made a suggestion of a non-touristy, very good, inexpensive restaurant, but we opted to try it later during our stay. We went back to the hotel and freshened up, then headed to a Piazza very close to our hotel that was a square of all sorts of restaurants with seating outside for all of them. It was a matter of just picking one that looked good!! They all seemed to be considerably inexpensive and filled with locals. So we basically just sat at one that had a table available outside (they were all fairly crowded...always a good sign!!) and took our chances. It was pretty cold that night, but all the restaurants had these tall, amazingly outdoor heaters so we ended up at a table right by one so we never felt the chill. The food was DE-LICIOUS; we ended up having an appetizer of these fried green olives filled with some kind of meat and they were AMAZING!! I've only found them once more since then, and definitely took up the opportunity to enjoy some. We ended up sitting out and enjoying the night air until about 12AM before we headed back to the hotel to get a good night's rest to hit Rome again the next day....but only to stop on the way back for a quick gelato at a great gelateria close by the hotel!! ;)

Walking back from dinner.

Day 2 was just as action packed and filled to the brim!!!