It was so early when we woke up that we were waiting for breakfast to be served. Once it was finally served, we all grabbed some yogurt or bread with nutella and ventured to the train station; we were off to Rome. Our original plan was to go to Venice, but after realizing that it has done nothing but rain since our arrival and we may be up to our necks in water, we opted for Rome. All the train tickets for Venice were sold out as well which was another good reason to go to Rome. Anyway, we get to the train station in Rome and after some debate the group splits. My group buys all-day tickets for the metro (subway for the American folks). We get off at the stop for the Colosseum. We walk up the stairs from the metro and the Colosseum is right in front of you. It is absolutely breathtaking. I liked everything about the Colosseum…for the exception of the gladiators. They come up to you and say they will take pictures with your own camera. They pose with you and the other gladiator takes pictures. But once the pictures are taken they want 5 euros (which was completely unknown to us prior to taking the pictures). Their loss…we got pictures with them but they didn’t get 5 euros from us. Our next destination was the Ruins. It was cool to see the remains of buildings that were destroyed hundreds of years ago. The materials that the Romans used to build their buildings were so strong that even after people tried destroying them completely, much of the columns and bases were still standing. My group then made its way to where Mussolini used to live. This place is massive. There are sculptures everywhere around this building. It is so beautiful and breathtaking that you can’t fit it into a picture without being a few blocks away. We continued walking and saw the dome of the Pantheon and got a great history lesson from Larry (“That’s the top of the Pantheon. It’s important.”) Great. Anyway, our next stop was at the Trevi Fountain. I was excited about this stop because I have been learning about it since high school. It was really gorgeous but we couldn’t soak it all in because we were soaking in all the rain. Everybody threw in coins (right hand over the left shoulder) and made wishes and then we were off to our next stop. We ended up at the Spanish Steps. Everyone was hesitant to walk to the top because we have already been walking for what seemed like days. After convincing ourselves it would be worth it, we climbed the stairs. We got to the top just in time for the sun to peek out and light a really beautiful scene. From the top we could see the top of the Pantheon…again. We walked to the metro and took that to the Vatican. Once we got to the Vatican we were all really sore and tired from walking all day, but we all managed to walk around and take pictures. The Vatican is the type of place that makes me feel like an ant. Now I am no giant by any means, but the Vatican is so massive that you can’t help but stand in the middle and have your breath taken away by how big and beautiful the area is. It was coming down to the time we said we were going to meet at the train station so we headed back. Once we got back into Florence most of us got ready and went out for another great night. How we partied until 4am when we were up by 7am that morning is still a question that boggles my mind.
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