I haven’t written anything in a while, I’ve been settling back in at home. Although I loved my time abroad, it feels good to be home. The next thing I’ll be writing about is my 2 week trip to 5 countries. I’ll start with Italy…
We traveled with a group from school that organizes trips for exchange students. I had to travel 10 hours from Marseille to Rome on a bus with no bathroom and loud students. It wasn’t fun, but I loved the scenery. I also got to see Monaco from a distance at night! Wish I could’ve seen it in the daytime, but I’ll get another chance.
In Italy I went to Rome for 3 days, then Pisa for 1. I really liked Rome and can’t wait to go back. The weather was amazing, it was the first time I didn’t have to wear a coat outside since it was cold in Marseille. I had a checklist of things that needed to get done before I left Italy.
- Eat some great pizza
- Eat some great pasta
- See the Coliseum
- Go to the Vatican
- Go to the Sistine Chapel
- Go Clubbing
I thought it was a pretty reasonable list for 3 days and I ended up getting most of it done. When we first got to the hotel we had an hour before going to the first place, which for me was the Vatican. So of course I went to get a margherita pizza. Surprisingly, it was disappointing. But it did the job of getting me full so I didn’t mind. Amongst my friends, I’m one who always wants to eat and is rarely angry even if the food isn’t that good. That attitude came in handy this time.
Then it was off to the Vatican! We took the metro to Vatican City and saw a lot of cardinals that were to be sworn in that day. The inside of St. Peter’s Basilica was absolutely beautiful. I’ll include some pictures of the inside and outside.
Next we attempted to go to the Sistine Chapel, by the time we got there it was closed. This upset me greatly… but, lucky for us, the next day was a free day which means we didnt have to pay, so I wasn’t too upset.
I was scheduled to go on a tour of the Coliseum the next day, but a few of us wanted to see the outside of the coliseum just to fill our time. Half of it was under some type of construction but it was still nice to see. We decided to walk around the area and ended up getting scammed by a guy selling paintings of Rome. It looked like he was painting as he was sitting there and we stopped and were amazed at his talent. So the three of us decided to buy a painting each and we took a picture with him. When we were done, we walked down two blocks and saw the exact same paintings! At that moment, we realized that we had been duped. We felt silly, but the pictures really were beautiful so we didn’t get upset.
We ended up eating some good pasta at night by the Coliseum. We also went clubbing in Rome, it was different and admittedly better than France, or at least Marseille. They had more song mixes and not so much weird techno, though I like techno but Marseille had the tendency to play one techno song over and over. It was a really great night.
At this point I had accomplished 4.5 out of 6 things on my list (since I saw the outside of the Coliseum that was half accomplished). The next day was a disappointment because we never went inside the Sistine Chapel because the line was so long that it would take us over 3 hours to get in. So we went to the Vatican because it was packed since the Pope was speaking that Sunday. We ended up staying there too long and when we got to the Coliseum, we realized we wouldn’t have had enough time to go on a tour and get back to the hostel in time to check out. So that’s 2 things in a row that was taken away from me.
I know that I’ll have another chance to go Italy one day. My goal is to plan a 2 week trip to Italy and visit Rome, Venice, Milan, and Florence. Next time I’ll be reminiscing about my time in Pisa and Belgium.
P.S. for more pics, visit my tumblr at beauty1114.tumblr.com.
