Semester at Sea | Rome, Italy

The Rome post, finally! It is so hard to just sit downs and blog when there is so much to do in every port! I’m happy I take good notes so when I go back to write I remember what happened. 😉

Nathan and I traveled to Rome with our friends Anna, Taylor, Natalie, and Pat. Poor Nathan and Pat always get stuck hanging out with a bunch of girls. But they’re all really wonderful and you’ll likely hear about them all later – they’re kind of our crew and we like ’em a lot! We left the ship at about 6:45 AM so we could make the nice walk to the train station and catch the 7:30 train. We made it in plenty of time because it turns out the train didn’t leave until 8:01! But we had time to sit down and hangout together so we didn’t mind the delay. 🙂

The train felt like it took forever because there are SO many stops. We must have stopped at least eight or nine times and the entire ride was just over an hour. Who knew there were so many little towns between Civitavecchia and Rome? When we got off in Rome we had another nice walk to Anna, Taylor, and Natalie’s hostel. We went the long, long way around the train station since we turned the wrong way at the beginning, but we definitely got our exercise in that day – believe me! By the time we got to the hostel and the girls got checked in we were all starving so we stopped at a little café and got cappuccinos and Nutella crepes. I had a few bites of Nathan’s crepe but I was really waiting to get some gelato on our way out. 😉 It was delicious!

The manager at the hostel drew us a route (with lunch spots included!) to get to all of the things we wanted to see so after breakfast we headed towards the Colosseum. On the way we stopped at a beautiful Roman Catholic church that had gold plated ceilings, enormous marble pillars, and the prettiest altar I have ever seen. There was a lot of incense going on in that church though so I made sure to get my photos and get out. Everyone had a nice laugh about my sneezes as we continued on our way to the Colosseum!

The Colosseum is an incredible structure. I can’t believe how enormous and ancient it is – it’s truly a piece of history in the middle of the city. We stood on a little bridge just across from the Colosseum and got some really good photos. We didn’t want to wait to go inside (the lines were super long) so we went around the perimeter and took a few peeks in where we could. The tour guides kept saying it was their “slow” season too. I would not want to come when it’s full-blown tourist season because it was absolutely packed when we were there! There’s a road near the Colosseum – an actual road for vehicles – that was flooded with people despite the fact that there were cars trying to get through. We all said a quick thank you to our non-touristy hometowns after noticing the struggle local people go through in Rome.

After the Colosseum we began the trek to the Trevi Fountain. Along the way we stopped and filled our water bottles from a spout in the ground and grabbed something quick for lunch. We walked along a street that had ruins on both sides and it was beautiful. Everywhere you go in Rome there is a piece of ancient history. I thought it was great! We took our time walking and stopped at several other sites along the way. Most of them were not planned, just happy accidents!

We knew that the Trevi was under construction but we were super bummed about just HOW MUCH construction was going on. The fountain was completely barricaded and there wasn’t a drop of water in it. Scaffolding surrounded it and we had to reach quite high over the barricades to get a decent photo of the structure. And, obviously, we still threw our coins in. 😉

Pat, Nathan, and I weren’t staying in Rome so we headed back to the train station after the Trevi Fountain and bought some snacks at the market and hopped on the train back to Civitavecchia. Actually, we RAN to the train back Civitavecchia because our train was on the very last platform of the station and that is way, way, wa dow. Plus the announcer was saying something in Italian that included the word “Civitavecchia” so we panicked. Godo thing, too, since we only had about three minutes to spare after we got on! We met several other SAS students on the train and found that almost missing the train on the way back definitely wasn’t the worst thing that happened to anyone. 😉

We are off to enjoy the Croatian sunshine for the last hour or so before we leave but I will post about Croatia first thing when we get to Greece in two days. School is so tough. 😉