Answer to the above: 80.
I've been in Rome for about 11 days or so. I already love it so much. This city is full of SO MANY THINGS - we are actually concerned that we don't have enough time here to see everything! My time here so far has been very eventful and full of activity. When we first arrived, we were greeted by a staff member from our school (CEA) who brought us upstairs to our new apartment. Now, we are on the 5th floor which quite honestly is quite the hike! It's even worse than having class on the 4th floor of the Quad building at St. John's, if you can imagine that. However, their are perks to this...first of all, good exercise. Second of all, we have a rooftop terrace. It is quite awesome - we have a gorgeous view of the entire city and a nice little living room which is nice for congregating. We love this apartment very much so far, as much as I miss the bugs in our apartment in Greece. The only problem that we had is with our toilets - at one point in time, neither of them would flush. Our roommate Taylor somehow discovered that they would only flush when the opposite shower is running. Well, this got a little complicated, so we had to consult the housing representative at our school named Andrea, who is a pretty entertaining guy to say the least. We've heard that he used to be Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast, so we are waiting for him to perform for us. In summary, this place is becoming a nice temporary home.
Some highlights since I've been here are as follows. We were taken on a guided tour by a professional tour guide one Sunday, getting to see the famous Pantheon and a few random fountains and ancient ruins. After this tour was when we found the 80 flavor gelato shop. Quite honestly, that many flavors is a little overwhelming, how do you choose?? But the food here is so great...we are truly getting spoiled so far. Speaking of food, another highlight we had was a pizza and gelato crawl put on by our school. We got to have a snack pizza, some dinner pizza, a special coffee gelato that is Italian, and gelato. We really enjoyed all of it minus the coffee...not everyone likes it. It is still fun to try new things though :). One of the flavors they had for pizza was a bacon, pumpkin, and onion pizza. I guess they must be getting ready for the holidays already!
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| The Pantheon by night |
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| St. Peter's Basilica and square by night |
Even though they don't celebrate Halloween to the extent we do in America, we still all got dressed up and had a Halloween party at our apartment. Our apartment had no idea what to dress up as...we were sitting there, trying to figure it out, when we asked, "What can you do with the number 7?" Immediately, two people called out, "The Seven Deadly Sins." So yes, we were the Seven Deadly Sins for Halloween. We had a lot of fun dressing up and exchanging clothes to make the costumes work. It was funny too, because none of us really matched the sin we were, hence, I ended up being Lust. I was glad we were still able to have a Halloween.
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| The Seven Deadly Sins |
One morning, we got up at 5:30 to see the sunrise at an important place in Rome. This is something that we are going to do once a week, because the sunrise is beautiful and the city is quiet so early in the morning. A few girls and I took the bus to the Colosseum and saw the sunrise. The Colosseum is impressive enough as it is, but with the sunrise? Wow. We also went over to the Trevi Fountain to enjoy the morning. I am looking forward to doing this every week!
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| The Colosseum at sunrise |
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| The group :) |
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| The Trevi Fountain |
Last weekend, we went to Subiaco for a day trip. Our main objective was to see two monasteries: St. Scholastica and St. Benedict. The monasteries were beautiful themselves, but we were also in awe with how beautiful the area was - high mountains filled with trees and trees of fall colors. After we saw the first monastery, we had some time to wander around, so we found a trail that went up a very tall hill. Even though it only led to some small old ruins, it had a gorgeous view at the top. After, we got to have a delicious, multi-coursed meal for lunch, which included pumpkin sauce on pasta? Again with the pumpkins...must be the holidays! We then saw the monastery of St. Benedict, which is really cool since our school is named after him. We also got to see the cave that he lived in seclusion for 3 years. They basically built the monastery around the cave. It was cool to see how old it was but how well it was preserved. We were pretty worn out after a full day of monasteries, but we really enjoyed it!
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| St. Scholastica and the beautiful scenery |
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| St. Benedict and the beautiful scenery yet again |
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| St. Ben's :) |
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| The town of Subiaco |
Well, that is all I have so far for Rome. Trust me, I will have plenty of other adventures to blog about before I come home. The clock is ticking quickly - we only have about 40 days left! It amazes me how fast time goes by...so we are enjoying every moment to the max here. Hoping all is well as the holidays approach!
Peace and Blessings,
Laura
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