Getting Lost in Rome Isn't That Bad

It's been a few days since my last post, I have some time before dinner and so much has been going on that I need to write it down before I forget.

We're now at our first real day being in Rome. The day we flew in, although arriving in the morning, really doesn't count, I mean it blended together with the day before and we were all too tired to do anything substantial.

We walked from our hotel to the St. Johns building.

We had the general orientation, "this is where you will be living", "remember you're representing your school", "this is how to be safe", talk. I'm not knocking it, as an orientation leader I can appreciate its importance, it was just a lot to take in at 9:00 in the morning.

During the lunch break a bunch of the guys and I wandered around looking for a place to eat. We wandered a few blocks away and found this restaurant called San Marco. This was the first time that any of us were by ourselves, really knowing little to no italian. We were able to order, which wasn't that difficult and again the food was amazing. Being typical americans we forgot that there was no need to tip the waiter... thats the last time we'll be making that mistake.

Next came the fun part of the day. We all knew the address of our host family already but didn't exactly know how to get there. We were provided with a map of the city, a map of the public transportation and a little guidance on how to get around. We all split up into groups based on who would be living in the same neighborhood and then about 30 loyola students dispersed into the city. My roommate Adam and I had it pretty easy. Our house is one block away from a metro station and the St. John's and Italiaidea buildings are also only one block from a metro station. We took the metro from St. Johns, after five stops changed at the Termini station and then proceeded to get onto the blue line for one stop. We quickly were able to find our house, down a really short and narrow street in the oldest part of the city. The best part is that is only about 20 minutes door-to-door.

This is where the adventure gets interesting. We had heard from past students that our house was close, really close, within walking distance to Italiaidea. Since we already knew how to get to St. Johns we figured that we would learn how to get to Italiaidea. We walked to the end of our block and back towards the main street. When we got to the main street, we were amazed, all we could see was the Coliseum at the end of the street. It spread past the width of the street and rose above all the building tops. I really wish there was another word other than amazing because I feel like I'm over using that, but it is the best descriptor. We headed towards the Coliseum, thinking that we could take the main street toward Italiaidea or at least get us headed in the right direction. This couldn't have been more wrong. We spent the next hour and a half lost in the city.

We were told by Dr. Dawson (the site director), the only way to really go out and get to know the city was to get lost in it and thats exactly what we were doing day one. I could always find exactly where we were on the map, but could never really get a handle on how to get from there to where we were trying to go. Thats the great this about the old side of the city, roads just popped up over time, the whole road system wasn't planned, so there are small alley ways and side streets everywhere. While this is all really interesting it makes getting from point-a to point-b a little more difficult. Overall, our travels took us on what could only be explained as a zig-zag throughout the city. We started to head east, then we would take another road because maybe thats how we were going to get to our language school... it wasn't so we kept bouncing back and forth while continually making our way north.

It was totally worth it though, we saw the roman forum again, the monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II (my favorite site here, don't know if I mentioned that earlier), the entrance to the Vatican and tons of really interesting sites. This is when it started to hit me, I'm living and going to be surrounded by some of the most historic sites in the world for four months.

By the end of hour one of being semi-lost, but always knowing where we were I started to get the hang of this map business. We made it to the river. Along the river we past an ice rink which looks like it was just set up for the winter season along, and it was blasting Usher. It seems that they are really into music from the early 2000's over here. Once we got past there we made it to familiar surroundings and back to the hotel. We were one of the earlier groups to get back and one of a select group to actually find our house easily. Our reward an hour and a half nap before dinner.

La Cita Eterna

We had finally arrived in Rome and the only initial reaction that I can explain is a mix of sheer amazement and awe. This was unlike anything most of us had ever seen, especially me since this was my first time to Europe. We dropped our bags off at the St. Johns University building, where Catholic University rents space. After this we went to the hotel, checked-in to our room and were free till 4 pm. The guys who I was rooming with for the night and I decided to get something to eat. I got a salami and cheese panino with a water for only 3 euro, not too bad. After we headed back to the hotel to take a nap till 4. Waking up at 4 pm was incredibly, incredibly hard but we made our way to the lobby.

As soon as we walked outside it started to downpour, of course. After a little while it turned into drizzle, but by that time our walking tour turned into our first public transportation adventure on one of the rome buses. Packing 50 students onto a bus in just a few seconds was interesting experience. We saw a good amount of the city and then began to walk again. We saw the Trevi Fountain, made our way to our Italian language school (Italiaidea) and the Spanish Sqaure. About a block from our italian school are the spanish steps, we got a little history on that and then headed for our second public transportation experiment, getting the entire group onto the metro (Rome's subway system). We took the metro from the spanish steps, learned where and how to cross over from the A line to the B line and then continued on. When we exited the metro station the first thing we saw was this.

The Coliseum.

It was amazing, we got out of the metro station and it was all that you could see. It took all of us by surprise. From there we headed up to the Roman forum and the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Unified Italy. It has been one of the most amazing sites that I have seen so far, just the sheer size and construction is mind blowing.

Finally, we reached the restaurant where the group was going to have dinner. It was a little early by Italian standards but, it was our first authentic Italian meal. I don't remember the name of it, or where it was really, but the food was amazing. We had 3 courses, the antipasto, which consisted of italian meats and different fried italian vegetables. Then the primo, which was pasta with two different sauces and finally the dolce, which was tiramisu and of course wine. It was one of the best and freshest meals I have ever had. We walked back to the hotel and basically passed out. By that time it had felt like I had been up for two days.

With that, my first day in Rome was over...