domingo, 6 de marzo de 2016

All roads lead to Rome.

Well hello there,
It's been a while since I've written anything on this blog. The main reason is because I've been ill and had a lot on my mind, especially school related. This is my final year of an equivelent of A levels in England and I have alot of studying and projects to do that take a lot of time. But enough about my boring life, this blog is about the three days I recently spent in Rome. I went with school on a trip through the north of Italy. I went to Rome, Sienna, Pisa, Florence, Padua, Venice and Milan. Today I'm only going to talk about Rome in this blog post as there is a lot to see and tell about it. We spent three days there and walked so much I thought my feet where going to fall off.

Our flight left at 6:40 am from Malaga. we where flying to Madrid and from there on to Rome. Which meant I had to be at the airport at 4:40 am. which was way to early for my liking as in the summer when I work I finish around that hour. As I went with my school we were a large group of 47 students and 4 teachers, so there were many people staring at us all the time. The flight to Madrid was short but annoying as I was sat at the end of the plane right next to the engine which made a lot of noise. The only good thing was the beautiful sunrise we were able to see from the plane windows. This is not the best picture but I was on the other side of the plane. When we landed in Madrid we had to take a TRAIN to get to the other gate, because the airport is so big. I couldn't believe it at first as I had never been to such a big airport. The second plane we took from Madrid to Rome was a lot bigger and more comfortable, we had a tv each with a great variety of films. I watched the last harry potter movie,obviously, haha. As soon as we got to the airport and collected our bags we got on a bus and got a tour of Rome seeing all the major sights we would be visiting later on. After walking and driving around for hours we had dinner in a small restaurant. Too small for such a large group, we were very thight together and it was very hot. The food wasn't all that good either so not a great end to an amazing day. The hotel on the other hand was great. We had big bedrooms which I shared with 2 other girls from my class.
 The view from  Saint Angelo's castle.



 The view of the Colliseum and the Circo Maximo.







Day 2:
The second day we had a nice breakfast at the hotel before heading into Rome to walk around again and seeing many more things. The plan at first was to go visit the Vatican but that had to be posponed due to a sacred mass of the pope occuring that afternoon, meaning all museum are closed and there are a lot of people. One of the places we visited was the fontana di trevi, which is one of Europe's most famous fountains. The tradition is to trow a coin that has been gifted to you by someon over your left shoulder with your right hand. One coin to return to Rome, 2 coins to get married and 3 coins to get divorced. It is truly a beautiful fountain especially at night.
We also visited the teatro de Marcello and the mouth of the truth, which is a statue of a demon with its mouth open in which criminals were forced to put there hand when acused of a crime, a superior force would judge him and if guilty cut of his hand. If innocent nothing would happen.

Day 3:
On the last day of our stay in Rome we visited the Vatican and the Colliseum, Phanteon and the romand forum. It was a lot in one day and I ended up exhausted. I have never walked as much in my life and was glad to spent the next day in a bus travelling through Italy. The Vatican was very impresive and very beautiful. There were a lot of people so we didn't get to fully enjoy all of it but still I really enjoyed it. After lunch  we went to the old Roman part of Rome which holds the Colliseum, the old forum and the arc of constantine. We visited and climed the colliseum and then walked around the city untill dinner, buying some souvenirs or in my case Pizza al taglio, which i an awesome Italian invention. You buy a piece of pizza and pay for its weight not an established price. And we got some Italian Gelato cause you can't leave whitout eating some obviously.



The only thing that majorly dissapointed me about the trip was the food we got. We were all hoping for nice freshly made pasta and other italian things, but all we got was maccaroni with tomato sauce as a starter and a strange kind of meat with chips (fries, in america). Most times the maccaroni wasn't even cooked properly.
On the last night I had to rapidly had to shove all my stuff in my suitcase as we were leaving the hotel in Rome to go to Sienna, Pisa and stop at a hotel near Florence.
But I will write about those three places in another blog post as this one is getting rather long.

Hope you liked it and enjoy the rest of your day/night where ever you are

xxSimone