When in Rome...

On THURSDAY, MARCH 21 we arrived in Rome! The flight there was beautiful, sunset and fields of puffing clouds!  We were picked up at the airport by Adriano, who drove us to our apartment. Adriano is a Romanian who worked for the people who owned our Rome apartment or our Rome home! When we got to our Rome home, the owners had made us a delicious, filling meal that ended up being our favorite meal in Rome! Once they left, we went to sleep in our beds that felt like wood, with our pillows that also felt like wood.

FRIDAY, MARCH 22: Adriano picked us up outside our apartment building and drove us to see the coliseum! We didn’t go in that day, but we gazed upon the mighty stadium in wonder!
 We went out to lunch, which wasn’t very good and had gelato that wasn’t very good either. I am keeping a good gelato and bad gelato count:

GOOD GELATO: ZERO              NOT SO GOOD GELATO: ONE

After lunch we had to be at the Vatican, so we were driven by Adriano! We arrived there and stayed for hours before leaving. The hundreds of statues were so amazing, and when we got to the Sistine chapel we didn’t think we would ever want to leave! We stayed in the Sistine chapel for 45 minutes, craning our necks to stare at the ceiling that Michelangelo painted so skillfully! We all liked the famous image in the middle of the ceiling, depicting god reaching for Adam’s finger, so at the first gift shop we saw, my mom got a postcard of that image, my dad bought a bookmark of the two hands almost touching, and I got a sketchbook of Adam reaching for god on the front and god reaching for Adam on the back. If you don’t know the picture I am talking about, you can search “god reaching out to Adam” in Google.

We soon had to leave the Vatican museums although we were all reluctant! We didn’t want to keep Adriano waiting in the car any longer; he had been waiting for hours!!!

SATURDAY, MARCH 23: we had an offer to be driven out of down to somewhere like Hadrian’s villa, because there were protests going on, but my mom didn’t want to bother Adriano any more, and we wanted to stay in Rome for the days we were there, so we went to the coliseum and listened to an audio guide! The public transit was crazy, but when we got there I was stunned! We learned so much about the architecture, the games that would take place and all the secret passageways under the stadium! And it was massive! Then we went up on the Palatine hill and saw many more ancient ruins! We then decided to go over to St.Peters square (which is actually a circle!) The new pope was going to speak there the next day, so workers were frantically planting flowers and setting up chairs! So many chairs! We met up with a few of our students who had come to Rome also! Kelsey, John, and Morgan! They were going to look inside St.Peter's cathedral and then come meet us in the square/circle. We ended up meeting in a café nearby where we got gelato! The gelato wasn’t very good though:

GOOD GELATO: ZERO              NOT SO GOOD GELATO: TWO

It was fun seeing some students, but we were all exhausted, so we said goodbye and headed back to our Rome home!

SUNDAY, MARCH 24: We decided to go to the Borghese museum! You walked through a big park to get to it, but we weren’t in the mood for walking! We wanted to bike!!! So we rented a family bike for an hour to ride around the park! The bike seated four people, and we all had pedals! My dad drove, and I got to sit in the front seat, but my steering wheel didn’t do anything! Only my dad’s did! My mom was behind me giving me power and Gabe was behind my dad giving him power! We had one of the best hours in Rome, on that bike!!!   We then entered the Borghese gallery and climbed up an exhausting amount of stairs! We finally reached the art, but realized we had passed the statues, so we went halfway back down all the stairs to see them! There were many amazing ones, and I wanted to draw some. So I went over and slightly moved a chair, so I had good lighting. I was about to sit down when a worker came over, and moved the chair back! I wasn’t allowed to use the chair to draw! I tried it again, just rotating a chair to face a different direction, and a different worker came over, and without saying a word, moved the chair! I am just glad we got to see all the statues and the paintings. We climbed halfway back up the stairs to look at the paintings and I did get to draw one good thing! He was a god from a painting. We think he might have been Zeus. Or maybe Hades?  He was in a painting that was on the ceiling of one of the rooms. I had to lie down on a bench to sketch him!

After the Borghese gallery we went out to the Trevi fountain. It was so packed with tourists!!! The legend is that if you throw a coin in you will come back to Rome, so I wanted to throw a coin in! My mom gave me a coin and we were kind of far away so I threw and it hit a tourist in her chest!!! I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to Rome!!!

From the Trevi fountain, we walked to the Spanish steps! On our way there we stopped for some gelato!!! I got chocolate and tiramisu. I had never even heard of tiramisu gelato, but it might be my new favorite flavor!

GOOD GELATO: ONE!!!                   NOT SO GOOD GELATO: TWO

We arrived at the Spanish steps and sat down finishing off our gelato. It was nice to relax there. We decided to walk over to the public transit stop and go home. That was the end of that Rome day.

MONDAY, MARCH 25: We packed our stuff, said goodbye and left Rome to go to Venice, which is a whole new blog that will be published soon…..

photos will be coming soon!!!!!