When in Rome, making "When in Rome" jokes is tacky

On Friday, nine of us packed our bags and set out for Rome for the weekend.  We took a morning train, and sat in Hogwarts-Express style train cabins as we burrowed through ear-popping tunnels for the next four hours.  We stayed at a really nice, cheap hostel down the road from the train station.  The first place we went was the Colosseum, but since one of us was arriving late we didn't go in until Saturday.  We'll discuss that when we get there.  Now, one of the students on our trip was my next-door neighbor and fellow Cornellian Caroline, who is an art history major.  She directed us to an exhibit at a local museum of her favorite artist, Caravaggio.  I couldn't take pictures there, but it was really sweet to have our own personal tour guide who new everything about all the paintings.  Afterward, in our wanderings, we managed to trip over the Trevi Fountain unintentionally.

It is not that blurry in real life, but I thought you'd like to see us.

The next day we woke up early and took the metro to the Vatican City because, you know, I haven't seen enough religious sites here in Italy.  We did the museum first, which I suppose is like the Pope's attic or something, and includes all of the various artwork from every era they've collected over the years.  Caroline was useful here as well, excitedly explaining which of the Ninja Turtles painted what as Kelsey, our resident Classics major, translated all of the Latin.

After the museum (which includes the Sistine Chapel at the end, but no pictures of that...the famous Adam image isn't nearly as large as I thought!), we split up: a few climbed the dome of the Basilica while the rest of us explored the papal tombs and main church.  I managed to suppress my dome addiction and went with down to the tombs and into the church.

Once we were done with Catholic Headquarters (why do I ever need to see another church in this country again?), a few of us waited in the square for the domegoers to descend.  I should mention that it was a glorious day.  I'm fairly certain that in Rome, on February 27th, as Ithaca received 21 school-delaying inches of snow, it was nearly 70 glorious degrees warm.  (That's real American degrees, not the big fake ones they have here.)

That's right.  Short sleeves.

After the Vatican, we made our way to the aforementioned Colosseum.  It was more or less colossal.

I even saw one of the lions!

After that, we went to the Spanish Steps at some point, though I'm having a hard time recalling the route we took because that's in the opposite direction.

The Spanish Steps are really more like a series of Spanish tourist benches.

The next day we packed our bags (the hostel guy let us leave them there after checkout, though) and beelined for the two major sites that we had missed, the Roman Forum and the Pantheon.  Now, I had called my blog entry about Ferrara "Old Things are Cool."  I'm going to generalize this into a rule: the older something is, the cooler it is.

The Forum was amazing, and easily tied with the Duomo in Florence for my favorite spot in Italy thus far.  It's a massive hill, covered in brick ruins and awesome marble edifices, and I could have spent hours more exploring every nook and cranny of it.  Our aforementioned Classics major Kelsey was running around like a kid in a 2500-year-old candy shop, explaining everything to us and directing us to everything we had to see.  The gardens, sitting on top the the hill, are possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.

 

 

After that we slipped over to the Pantheon for a bit before our train.

 

Hey!  A dome!  The Pantheon was neat in that it was a whole bunch of eras in one building.  It was built by the Romans, converted later to a church, and currently houses the tombs of two of the republic's founders.

So that was Rome, my first overnight excursion and definitely one of the coolest cites ever.  No plans for the coming days, but my friend Emily from Cornell, currently in Paris, is coming to visit on her vacation and we'll certainly go somewhere.