"The Contented Person Enjoys the Scenery of a Detour"

Monday, April 2, 2007

Today was our ancient day. I had all these grand plans of seeing the ancient "stuff" that's in Rome, including the Colosseum, the Forum, and Palatine Hill. Since it was going to be a full day, I was up by 8:30 and grabbed a quick shower. To thwart the sun's goal of giving me another red nose, I actually remembered to put on sunscreen today. How cool is that?

Then I got Meghan up and organized my things and made our lunches while she got ready. We ate peanut butter and nutella sandwiches that week in order to save money. I love peanut butter and nutella. It's pretty much amazing. Once Meghan was ready, we ran out to catch the bus to get to town.

Our first stop was the Colosseum. There were tons of people outside waiting to get in and lots of men dressed as gladiators that you could take your picture with if you were willing to pay them. I wasn't, so I didn't. The lines were moving fairly quickly and it seemed like people had a better handle on getting through security here than they did in the Vatican. Once we were inside, we had to purchase tickets, and if you were a student in the EU, you got a discount. Since IES Vienna is in the EU, I presented my card, but they said they couldn't give me the discount, which pretty much sucked. I paid the regular price and got the ticket, which turned out to be a combo for the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill.

Inside the Colosseum was a bit of letdown. I really wasn't very impressed and since then have decided that when I go with Erika and Paul, that we'll just walk around the outside since there's not really much to see inside. There was also an art exhibit in there called "Eros" which had pieces all about love and Cupid/Eros. Once we had walked around the Colosseum -- well, I walked, Meghan kind of lurked behind me -- we went to Palatine Hill.

Palatine Hill is right across the street from the Colosseum, and absolutely gorgeous. It's all green with trees and flowers, and there's a lot of ruins there. We walked for a bit and then found a place to sit and eat our lunch. Then we wandered around a bit more and I took some pictures of the different flowers and the orange trees. I think I liked this place so much because it felt completely seperate from the rest of Rome. It was really quiet and peaceful and the weather was perfect tanktop weather.

From Palatine Hill, we walked through the Forum, which would be a good place to have at least an audioguide. I'll do that with Erika and Paul. It was interesting to see all the ruins, but for the most part, I had no clue what each one was. When we were there, we saw the place where Caesar was cremated and I think it's a little bizarre that people still put flowers and things there today. But whatever makes them happy, I guess. We also found the stone with the flower on it. This ties into a very long story, so if you want to hear about it, ask me and I'll explain it to you. Just suffice it to say that it was a mild obsession to find this particular stone and I was thrilled when I finally saw it.

After all this walking, it was deemed necessary to take a gelato break. Today's flavors were kiwi and passion fruit. The kiwi was amazing, I think it might have been one of my favorites, but the passion fruit was just a little weird.

The next stop on our ancient tour was the Circus Maximus. Now I was expecting something kind of like the Colosseum, which was in pretty good shape. The Circus Maximus is a hole in a field. I mean, it's cool to see all the people hanging out there and such, but there're absolutely no ruins where the Circus Maximus used to be. This incited another round of people watching, and some of the pictures of it can be found on my picture site.

At this point, it was getting close to four o'clock, and I was meeting Barbara at five by Trevi Fountain because she was spending two days in Rome during break. We ambled slowly up to the fountain and found a prime people-watching spot to relax until we found Barbara. It seemed to take forever, but eventually I got a call from her and found her in the crowd. It was a little weird to see her there, just because it's always weird to see people out of context, but very cool at the same time. We waited for a super long time before Wini, Nola, and Lindsay showed up (Barbara was also meeting them because she was traveling with those girls for the rest of break). Then lo and behold, we saw Connor, who is also from IES Vienna and had stopped in Rome for a few days. We invited him to dinner with us and told him where we'd be eating. He decided to walk for a little bit, but he promised to meet up with us later on for dinner.

Once everybody was together, we walked over toward the Pantheon, which is Barbara's favorite building. Meghan and I had had dinner in that area the night before and decided to bring everybody there to eat. Once we got settled and ordered, I got a call from Connor and he joined us. Just about everybody got the fettucini, but I thought I'd branch out a bit with chicken. I was still hungry after I had dinner. The pasta was definitely the better way to go. Dinner was a slightly short event because the girls had to get back to their hostel while public transportation was still running, and they were staying about an hour and a half outside of Rome. I wish I had gotten to see more of them because dinner was a lot of fun, but it just wasn't meant to be.

Since I still had some empty space in my stomach, I decided to make a gelato stop. There's a place near the Pantheon that has really good gelato and really generous scoops. I don't know the name of it, but I'm sure I'd be able to find it again. By the end of the week, the man behind the counter started to recognize us, which I thought was cool, but, of course, Meghan couldn't stand it. Anyway, this time I got strawberry and marscapone. I'm still not quite sure what marscapone is, but it tasted really good. You'll notice in coming posts that I rarely got the same gelato flavor twice because it was one of my missions to try as many flavors as possible, hence the list at the end of my spring break blogs.

It started getting cold, so after we finished our gelato, I asked Meghan to hold my things while I put on my layers again. Some creepy guy came up to me and asked me if I would strip for him. I think I just looked at him incredulously and ignored him. It was so gross! Once I had all my layers on again, we headed for the metro and back to CFab.