Caribou Coffee! Represent.

This is when Yelena got mouth-raped by that pig in the parade

All right… back to this blog! Between traveling every weekend and trying to do this pesky thing called homework, I’ve only had time to jot a few things down.

So, let’s start with 2 weekends ago… I went to Carnivale in Venice! Carnivale is a huge celebration in Venice that goes on throughout the entire month of February. It’s basically like Mardi Gras for us, but it’s not just one day. However, the entire celebration does end on Ash Wednesday.

Carnivale started a super long time ago after some battle that Venice won. They celebrated in the streets and in San Marco square. They started wearing the traditional Venetian masks so that they could wreck havoc and do whatever they want, but still show their faces in public the next day. The masks became super popular during the Black Plague as well when everyone got to cover up the giant black boils on their faces.

So all of the girls and I went with Bus2Alps for a day trip to experience Carnivale. We left extremely early in the morning and hundreds of us piled on about 5 different buses. It was a 3-hour drive to Venice and the snow was crazy! Europe has had a record snowfall lately, and although we haven’t experienced it in Florence, you could see it going up to Venice. There was tons of snow all over the mountains and the countryside.

When we finally made it to Venice, we stepped off the bus, and HOLLLLYYYYY CRAPPPPP it was freezing. It was like being in Cleveland in the middle of winter… times 10 million.

So basically, you are on water the entire time. I guess the wind and cold air were to be expected.

Also, Venice doesn’t have a sewer system. The canal tides come up twice a day… and that’s their sewer system. We saw this couple making out on top of one of the bridges, and I just kept thinking, “You’re making out right above your own poop.”

Then there was the fact that there were no street signs. There were only spray painted arrows on walls saying how to get to the main points in Venice. We had to go through dark, skinny alleyways and through places that weren’t very well lit. But everything led us in the correct direction!

We spent a pretty good chunk of time picking out masks. We really wanted them to say “Made in Venice” with a little seal on it. The cheapest ones were made in China, and there were ones for 15 euro that had the seal… but some of them went all the way up to 200 and 300 euro. I finally found one that I liked for 15 euro! It was on a stick, so I didn’t have to worry about tying it around my head, waiting for it to fall off, or trying to see out of it.

After buying masks, we pretty much bar hopped. It was so cold that we kept running for shelter and being forced to buy things. But it was ok because I kept buying “hot wine.” Hot Wine is wine that’s boiled with cinnamon and various fruits, like oranges. They sold it on almost every corner because it was freezing. It was so good! It warmed me up like tea, but with the lasting effects of alcohol. 

Inside one of the bars we went to, we totally creeped on this couple. We kept taking pictures of their costumes from far away until they finally caught us. We introduced ourselves and the woman started screaming, “I’m from America!!!! I’m from the South!!! You are my people!!!!” She might have been a little drunk.

She told us that she studied in Europe when she was in college, and came back when she got older. She started living in London, but was only going to live there a few months when she met her current husband. She has been living in London now for 15 years, and they come to Carnivale every year.

Throughout the day we mainly explored. We saw some crazy costumes! Some people take Carnivale very seriously and dress up like how they would back in the day. They usually just walk around as tons and tons of people come up to them and ask to take pictures with them. Some of them charge to take pictures with them… which wasn’t cool. But most of them didn’t.

Then there were some people that just acted like it was Halloween. We saw Batman, Jack Sparrow, a guy dressed in tin foil (?), and bananas…

And although we never saw any, there were supposed to be “Bear Children” that walk around during the day and throw confetti at you. We only saw like one child… and he had just a mask on… not a bear costume. It made sense though because it was so cold, and most of this holiday is devoted to drinking.

When we were walking around we came across this random parade. It was pretty much full of drunk people that were dressed up and just choosing to walk around and play music. It really just turned into a parade as more and more drunk people joined. 

As we were watching the parade, Jesus and a pig came up to my friend Yelena… said something in Italian… and then the pig took her face in his hands and planted a huge kiss on her lips! Yelena freaked out and backed up, and then he tried to do it again! She screamed and ran… we all stood around, just laughing.

At night, we went to San Marco (the square where the main party happens) and we watched some Italians perform really awkward music on stage. Everyone else was dancing and having a great time, but we just watched because they were playing the chicken dance on banjos and accordions… only, no one really knew how to do it, so everyone was just awkwardly shimmying around.

Just as we were about to leave the square and go find someplace warm to eat dinner, this guy stopped Lydia. He said he was with a TV crew and wanted to know if we could all stand around and act like we were having a good time in the background as he reported.

Some great journalism ethics right there ;)

It turned out that the film crew was Russian, and since Yelena speaks Russian, she went up to talk to them. He told her that it was for the evening news in Russia, and it wasn’t live TV, but it would be broad casted on the Russian news in a few days. 

So we stood around and waited for the light to come on… and when it did, he started reporting, and we started dancing and yelling and throwing confetti. When the people around us saw that we were being recorded, all these random people joined in and started dancing too.

After we filmed for the Russian news, we found a restaurant to have dinner. Venice is famous for cuttlefish pasta served with the ink from the cuttlefish as the sauce. I really wanted to try it, but then I saw that the pasta was literally black. So to keep with the seafood theme… I ordered tuna pizza….

After dinner we had to meet Bus2Alps back at the buses at 10pm. In our severely cold state, we piled into the first water taxi that pulled up. Turns out, this water taxi wasn’t going to drop us off at the island we needed to go to, so we had to switch lines. Around 9:50 we decided we were going to be late. We called our trip leader and told her not to leave without us, that we would be there ASAP. She said that the buses were late anyways and not to worry! 

After we got on the buses and were about 10 minutes away, our bus announced that it was turning around because two girls got left behind. When we TURNED AROUND for them, they got on the bus and started yelling at our trip leader that they couldn’t believe she left them behind just because they were a little late, and if they wouldn’t have turned around, her “daddy” would have made sure that they did.

Ok…

Well all-in-all, Carnivale was great! I can’t wait to experience Venice again when we go back in April!

Watch me jump off a canyon in Interlaken, Switzerland!

Today was epic.

We woke up and ate breakfast… well, Lydia and I did. Then we layered up (definitely not well enough), and got on our bus to take us to Grindelwald canyon, to canyon dive!!!

We got in the van with one other girl, who was really nice, and 2 Asians who barely spoke English. We drove up a mountain for about 20 minutes and stopped to go to the bathroom because it was the last one for miles. We also stopped to pick up our photographer.

We drove for about 10 more minutes and then we stopped and they told us we had to walk the rest of the way up the mountain because it was too icy for the van to get up.

So we trudged up a mountain. We slipped, slid, ran out of breath, and fell in huge piles of snow. By the time we got to the top of the canyon, my face was numb and my toes were frozen.

Yeah, so we later found out that this weekend was the coldest Interlaken has seen all year. It was negative 3*F when we jumped. It makes the story more badass, but if you’re going to go canyon jumping… go when it’s warmer.

So then Ziggy, our instructor, unfroze our harnesses and strapped us in while our photographer, Grizz, took our pictures. She kept calling the Asians “Asian Fusion” and “Crouching Tiger,” and then whenever she went to take their pictures, they would pose with the peace sign lol

Then Grizz got on a wire and rolled into the middle of the canyon to wait for us to jump.

 Ziggy asked which one of us was going to go first… silence fell over the whole group. So I volunteered. Probably because I’m insane, and probably because if I watched someone else go first, I would freak out.

 “Oh my God,” Jess said, looking over the edge. “We’re going to die.”

 “Here’s the bad news,” said Ziggy. “You’re all going to die… just not today.”

So I got strapped in, I fixed my hair (not that it mattered), took off my gloves (HUGE HUGE HUGE MISTAKE, but I didn’t want them to fall off), and walked to the platform.

Ziggy told me to pose for the camera…

Then he asked me if I was ready, and he let the rope go. In the video, you can see him let the rope go and I sort of get pulled forward, but then I fight it… the rope was so heavy when he let it go!! It was a huge rope, number one. And number 2, it was weighed down with ice. But all I could picture was the rope pulling me to the edge, and then I would lose my footing or slip on ice, and just topple off the edge in the most unsexy and un-badass jump ever.

“Can I go?” I asked. I wanted to make sure everything was strapped in and secure, you know?

I started off screaming, but during the 4-second free fall, nothing came out. My heart felt like it was in my throat. The 4 seconds felt like 4 minutes as I plummeted through the ice-cold air, watching the snow covered rocks and icy waterfall get closer.

Then the rope caught, and I started screaming again… it was like I just paused my scream for 4 seconds. I leaned back and put my hands out, just taking in the scenery and processing what the hell just happened.

The instructor at the bottom started clapping, “That was a great jump!” he yelled.

He threw me a rope to catch so that I could pull myself to the platform. Too bad I couldn’t even feel my fingers, let alone bend them around a rope. They were red, puffy, and numb. I seriously thought I had frostbite. But I couldn’t sue if my fingers fell off because I signed a waiver!!

The instructor pulled me to the METAL ladder where I had to use my arms to climb up. He gave me his gloves (awww so nice of him!) and told me to wait under this rock-thing in case any rocks or ice fell. I wasn’t allowed to leave until the whole group was done jumping. It was cool because I got to watch everyone from the bottom, but it wasn’t cool because I had to stand there forever, freezing my ass off. There was a while where I thought I was going to puke… not because I just jumped off a cliff… but because I was so cold.

I got to watch everyone jump and freak out. Then see their faces when they realized what just happened haha

The last one to go was one of the Asian girls. She jumped and started screaming (normal), but then her screaming turned into a kind of wailing? Then we realized she was crying hysterically and freaking out. But by the time she reached the platform, she was fine and pulled it together and was even smiling. Yeah, I don’t know…

He took us back to our hostel where we ate a ton of food and immediately passed out. The whole experience was so exhausting that we had to sleep for a bit.

It might have been deadly cold, we might have hiked up a mountain, and I might have been really close to getting frost bite… but when someone asks me, “If all your friends were to jump off a cliff, would you do it too?” I can reply, “Yes, because I’ve actually done that before.”

Worth it.

After class on Thursday, I went back to my apartment to eat dinner and pack for Interlaken, Switzerland!

I met Laura, Jess, and Lydia at the Santa Maria Novella train station at 7:30pm and then we met the Bus2Alps group at 7:50.

Bus2Alps is basically the AAA of Europe. You just go online, pick the trip you want, pay them, and they take care of everything. I must say that I was pretty impressed with them the entire time. They were super friendly and really informative.

We got on the enormous charter bus, and Lauren and I lucked out and grabbed the seats on the edge with the stairs behind them, so we could put our seats allllll the way back with no one behind us. We are such bitches haha

We drove for 4 hours until we stopped for food and a bathroom at this shady gas station. Although, the gas station looked pretty prepared for us because everything they sold was in bulk…? There were huge 40 euro jars of Nutella, big 60 euro jugs of olive oil, etc. So strange…

Upon stopping, I sort of got a feel for the kind of people I was travelling with. Interlaken is the Swiss Alps… essentially a skier’s paradise. And who likes to ski? Rich people. So our group was full of sorority girls with high-pitched voices and frat boys who said “bro” all the time in the deepest voice possible. Some went to Stanford, some went to George Washington, and some went to Penn State. Lauren and I had the best time quoting “Shit Frat Boys Say” from YouTube. If you haven’t seen it… watch it. It’s hilarious.

Then we drove for another 4 hours. They blasted movies, and occasionally the air conditioning, which was annoying when you are trying to sleep. But I guess the last hour of driving got pretty intense because of the snow and ice, however, our driver got us there all in one piece.

Hey, it’s called Bus2Alps… they HAVE to get you to the Alps, right?

We arrived at our hostel, Backpacker’s Villa, around 4am. Lauren accidently booked the more expensive hostel because she waited too long to book, and the cheaper hostel was full. But THANK GOD she made that mistake. The cheaper hostel, Balmer’s Resort, was disgusting. It was a frat house; it was super gross, and really loud because there was a bar/dance club in the basement of the hostel.

Our hostel was really nice. We got free breakfast and as many hot coffee drinks as we wanted. Everything was really modern looking and clean too. Not to mention, the shower was better than the one I have at home.

But someone should have told us that our room was a 6-person room. The 4 of us walked in, being super loud and groggy, only to wake up our one other roommate, Bridgette. We apologized and she was cool about it… which was good.

Then we threw our stuff down, climbed into our bunk beds and passed out until 10am.

We woke up, layered on about 10 layers of clothing and ventured outside. We were shocked when we stepped outside into the light. BAM! Huge, white, beautiful mountains everywhere! We had no idea because it was so dark when we arrived.

We walked around the little town of Interlaken in the snow and the 17*F weather. We exchanged our euros for Swiss Franks, I bought a hat (because I seriously needed one), hand warmers, and a shot glass. So far I have a shot glass from every city I’ve visited.

Then we heard from one of our trip leaders that you could go into this hotel and go all the way to the café at the top and get a panoramic view of the mountains. So we wandered into this random hotel lobby (hoping it was the right one), got in the elevator, and went to the top floor. Luckily, it actually was the café.

The hot chocolate and the cake were amazing, but the view was even better.

After a few more pictures and even more walking, we went to a chocolate show!

We paid 14 Swiss Franks to watch this chef make chocolate molds and tell us how the Swiss make LEGIT chocolate. Then we got an 8CHF voucher to buy chocolate from the store. Best. Chocolate. Ever. So amazing… seriously.

We had dinner at the cheapest place we could find. It was called Export Pizza. I got a fish burger and a Swiss beer for about $13. Any other restaurant we found… sandwiches were about $18 and pizzas were about $25.

Then we went into the Metro Bar at Balmer’s. We took our roommate with us. She was really nice. She’s studying in Barcelona, but is from the Bronx. She came by herself because she really, really loves skiing.

We didn’t stay long at the Metro Bar because it was like a scene from the Swiss version of The Jersey Shore. That, and beer was $5 a bottle, and rum and coke was $10.

However, Lauren and I started quoting “Shit Frat Guys Say” again, and these other guys heard us, and their jaws dropped. “But… you’re girls…?”

“Shots on shots on shots!”

Man, I saw a lot in Rome…

Allorah, on day 3 Rocky took us to the Borghese. It’s this really beautiful museum that used to be the party house of the nephew of Pope Paul V. It really was a party house. It was decorated to impress people, and he would hold massive parties with lots of art to look at, alcohol to drink, and naked women to… you know.

It’s also the home of the Borghese gardens, the second largest park in Rome. Basically, the Central Park of Rome. We did walk through the gardens, and they were so pretty! There were lots of runners and people walking their dogs, but it was seriously freezing.

I won’t talk much about the Borghese because you aren’t allowed to take any pictures… at all… of anything. They make you put everything you have with you in a crate at the front desk to ensure you won’t take any pictures or steal anything…? I’m not sure why they have this policy, but they do.

However, I did get to see a lot of Bernini’s earliest sculptures and paintings. I was literally in shock. His sculptures were so breathtaking. He could make anything out of marble… wrinkles, thin leaves, muscles, etc. If you ever have a chance to go and see his work, GO!!!! I don’t know how else to explain how amazing his work is; you just have to see it in person.

We also got to see the paintings of Caravaggio, who was basically the bad ass of the art world. He like, murdered someone and then was wanted by the police, but he was always on the run and they could never catch him. He also slept with a ton of women and drank all the time. But, in between all of his shenanigans, he still managed to create some of the most amazingly, well-done, scary-ass paintings you will ever see. Then one day, the Pope said he would pardon Caravaggio from all the crimes he committed, if he could have this one specific painting (David with the head of Goliath). Caravaggio agreed, and got on a boat with his painting to deliver it to the Pope. The painting made it to the Vatican, but Caravaggio never did… a HUGE conspiracy in the art world apparently…

After the Borghese, Rocky took us to look at like, 10,000 churches. We went into about 10 massive, elaborate churches before we walked into this dinky, sketchy chapel with a gypsy holding the door open asking for money. But after we got inside we looked to the side of the altar and BAM!!! There was the original Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by Bernini… just sitting there… being awesome… not in a museum. It was so crazy!

Rocky started lecturing us while we took pictures, and that’s when we noticed this random Asian man that joined our group. Not only did he join our group to listen about this statue, but then he followed us around for the rest of the day! He wasn’t blending in at all! We might have been a group of 40, but we all knew each other, so this guy stuck out like… well, an Asian man in a group of American students.

After seeing all of the churches in Rome, we walked to my favorite Roman tourist attraction, The Trevi Fountain!!! This fountain has been in a number of famous movies.

There were actually a lot of different stories that I heard about the Trevi fountain while I was there… but the one I heard most frequently was that if you stand backwards and throw a coin in while making a wish, that wish is guaranteed to come true. It is also guaranteed that you will one day return to Rome.

Ciao for now Roma!!!

On our second day in Rome, Petra and Rocky took us to the Vatican! Located sort of in the upper corner of Rome, The Vatican is massive and completely walled in because it’s considered its own country.

It’s exactly what I thought it would be… totally majestic and full of nuns, monks, and priests.

Upon entering The Vatican, you have to go through security. They have about the same kind of security as an airport… minus the whole taking-off-your-shoes thing. This may also be the time where a security guard might ask you to leave based on your clothing, or rather, lack there of. There was a girl in our group who had on a tight, black mini skirt with ripped see-thru tights. She didn’t get stopped. But don’t worry, her fate will come later.

We walked into the courtyard where we saw an enormous pinecone. Rocky told us the legend is that this pinecone is the object that helped get the piece of glass all the way to the top of the Pantheon. Then it flew all the way to the Vatican and landed in the courtyard. Weird Roman legends…

Now, you will have to understand… that The Vatican is absolutely massive. You could spend literally all day inside and not see all the original works of art that The Vatican possesses. But they do possess quite a lot of stuff. I’ll try to post the most important works of art that I saw…

#1 – The statue of Laocoon and his 2 sons being strangled by sea serpents. Poseidon sent the snakes after Laocoon struck the Trojan horse with a spear in order to reveal that it was a trick sent by the Trojans. During the fall of Rome, the statue was lost and wasn’t found for a really long time and was thought to be destroyed. Then a random farmer was tilling his land when the ground gave way, and inside this huge hole was this statue. Michelangelo himself was called down to the site in order to prove that it was the real statue… it was. And after that, Mr. M said his life goal was to make everything he sculpted or painted look like this. To see it in person is amazing. The guy has everything from veins in his thighs to the most perfectly sculpted toenails. It’s nuts.

#2 – The Belvedere Torso. This is an unfinished (obviously) sculpture of a nude male. It was significant because it showed how sculptors generally worked… they would start with the core and then they could put the head and legs of anyone they wanted to on the rest of the sculpture. The torso itself is absolutely huge and is said to weigh tons. It is also an example of how super detailed sculptors could be, from carving abs to leg muscles to pubic hair… although, proportionately, no one could ever be this huge and jacked… the detail is still incredible.

There are tons of rooms in The Vatican dedicated to certain mediums of art. One of the rooms was the room full of tapestries. It was dimly lit and you couldn’t take pictures with flash because light could ruin the look of the thread. But most of the tapestries were the result of the patronage of the Medici. Each tapestry took forever and then some to hand-make, and some crazy person did the math, converting “buckets or pails” (the money they used back then) to the common dollar we use today, and it comes to about $10,000+ for one tapestry.  

Among the rooms with themes… we saw The Gallery of Maps. They are topographical maps of Italy painted on the walls by friar Ignazio Danti of Perugia, commissioned by whoever the Pope was all the way back in the 1500s. It’s still the world’s largest pictorial geographical study, and all the maps are still incredibly accurate even though they were painted a super long time ago. It was kind of funny though, if there was a city that the painter or the church had beef with, the city would still be on the map, but it would be super small haha

#3 – The next super famous thing that we saw was The School of Athens, the fresco painted by Raphael in a Vatican library. Each wall of the library had a theme, and this wall’s theme was philosophy. The painting depicts the most famous minds to ever exist. You’ve got Plato and Aristotle bullshitting in the middle, Diogenes trying not to care or believe in anything lounging on the stairs, Pythagoras making up theorems on the left side, Socrates and Alexander the Great are also on the left side, and then Euclid teaching students on the right hand side… just to name a few. There are a ton of theories and myths about this painting that I’m not even going to get into right now. But there is one myth that Plato (in the center) is actually supposed to be Leonardo da Vinci and the guy leaning on the box right in the front of the painting is supposed to be Michelangelo. But it is said the Raphael went back and added Michelangelo only after he saw what he did in the Sistine Chapel. And it is kind of odd… because seeing the fresco in person…. The guy does look really out of place and not like he was part of the original plan. But who knows…

#4 – Apparently, The Vatican has one of the largest religious modern art collections in the entire world. Everything from Picasso to Van Gough… Here is Madonna and Child by Matisse…

The room of modern religious art leads into the Sistine Chapel. Ok so, sorry to disappoint, but you are not allowed to take pictures of it. It’s a very serious business. You walk in and everyone is super silent. There are guards lining the walls of the whole thing and there are tons of people. If you try to take a picture (which people do) the guards WILL catch you and they will come over and erase all the pictures off your phone or camera. I didn’t exactly want to risk that. They also yell really loudly to be quiet if you even let out a whisper.

But basically, you walk in, try to find a seat on a bench (they are probably all taken) and you look up. It took my breath away. It was so amazing. There it was… the Sistine Chapel… the original… painted by Michelangelo himself. There was God, breathing life into Adam. It was so surreal. You could even see the chunk right below the ceiling that was left unpainted because that’s where Michelangelo’s scaffold sat.

 Some interesting facts?

 Michelangelo didn’t know what he was doing. He was a new guy who had sculpted before, but didn’t do anything this large yet. So he started right above the door because people don’t look straight up as soon as they enter, they look ahead. So if he messed up, it would be in a spot that hardly anyone looked at anyways. He painted 3 scenes with tons of people and action in them… stepped down… and realized they were really hard to make out from the floor. So he started painting bigger scenes with only about 2 people per scene.

 It took him 5 years to complete… he thought it would only take 1 or 2 years. And he made approximately 4 million dollars over all.

 He painted The Last Judgment on the front wall of the chapel. In the original painting, everyone was naked. The Pope at the time thought it was too provocative and asked Michelangelo to paint clothes on them. He refused, and instead painted the Pope’s face on the devil in the bottom right hand corner as revenge. After Michelangelo died, the Pope asked some nobody to paint clothes on the naked people and he did. To this day, hardly anyone remembers his name (even me) and he is only known as “the underwear painter.”

After the Sistine Chapel, we walked across the square into St. Peter’s Basilica. This church is…. MASSIVE. Literally, it’s so large and so spacious, it’s impossible to capture in pictures. Say a quarterback could throw a football 70 to 80 yards… if he were to stand at the door and throw, it wouldn’t even make it to the middle of the church. They have other cathedrals of enormous size listed on the floor because that’s where that cathedral would sit INSIDE St. Peter’s. That’s right, the Duomo in Florence would fit inside St. Peter’s, and there would still be plenty of room.

Under the 10 story gold altar thing that they have, the body of St. Peter is said to be buried. The body of the former Pope, Pope John Paul, is also inside. You can go and pray for him at his coffin.

Also inside St. Peter’s, behind bulletproof glass, is Michelangelo’s Pieta. A sculpture he completed when he was 20 years old.

Oh right! I almost forgot… the skanky girl in our group met her fate inside St. Peter’s. A guard came up and told her she looked inappropriate and needed to cover up. She told him she was covered up. He said she can either use her scarf to cover her legs, or she could leave. She chose the scarf. I saw the whole thing! JUSTICE! hahaha

This past weekend, the Kent State program took us to Roma! We had to meet at the train station super early, at like 7:15AM. We took the Fast Track Train from Florence to Rome. These trains are expensive, but they go really really fast which was good because we arrived in Rome in only an hour and a half.

When we got to Rome, a charter bus was waiting to take us to our hotel. There was even a guy who loaded our luggage for us. Props Kent State, I’ll miss this when I’m on trips that I planned myself.

We checked into Hotel Navona where Bethany, Amy, and I were put into a room together. European hotels are weird. They have lobbies and a breakfast area just like American hotels do, but European hotels are sort of a labyrinth.

Hotel Navona was sort of like a house with lots of hallways and twists and turns. Each turn lead to a random door. None of the doors looked the same and all of the decorating was different, nothing was cohesive. You would go from a chic, modern room, to blue carpet in the next room, to duck wallpaper in the next hallway.

We got into our room, and it was pretty nice. The bathroom was a decent size, and we had a fireplace, and a flat screen. There were 2 single beds pushed together under one headboard to make a queen mattress. Then, there was another single bed pushed up against a wall.

Considering the other closet-sized 2 bedroom-made-into-3-bedroom-bedrooms other girls had… we got extremely lucky. 

Our first stop in Rome was right around the corner. Apparently one of the most famous coffee shops in Rome, Lant Eustachio il caffe, was known to serve the best espresso around. I paid 2.50 euros for an Americano… and I didn’t even need sugar. It was AMAZING!

After coffee, we started walking. We always walk everywhere. We walked to the Victor Emmanuel Monument. It’s kind of funny because tourists see this enormous, white building that’s super elaborate and all they want to do is take pictures of it. But the Italians that live in Rome essentially make fun of it by calling it “The White Birthday Cake” or “The Giant White Typewriter.” The building was built to honor Italy’s first king who united the city-states into the country of Italy. But it really just looks ridiculous because everything else in Rome is brown, old, and ancient looking. So really, this building sticks out like a sore thumb and looks ridiculous smack-dab in the center of ancient Rome.

As we kept walking, we passed the Roman Forum. We had tickets to go inside and look at the ruins, but we couldn’t because all the workers were on strike. There is sort of a lot of “anarchy,” I guess, going on in all of Europe right now. Basically, there are all these protests and strikes happening in retaliation to Europe’s economic crisis. There were rumors that Air Italy completely shut down for 24 hours because of a strike. I was pretty bummed that we couldn’t walk among ancient Rome, but I know it would have been a lot of rocks accompanied with a lot of walking. I did see some of it from the street, and that was good enough for me.

However, the Forum is right beside the Coliseum, and everyone was freaking out that the Coliseum might be closed as well. LUCKILY, it wasn’t. The line for tickets to the Coliseum was about 4 hours long, it was also about 11:30am and it closed at 1. Props to Kent State for pre-ordering tickets. We got some glares as we walked past the 4-hour line to get right in.

The Coliseum is so awesome! To think that this was essentially the first movie theater is crazy. Gladiators would go in and fight until one of them couldn’t get up anymore. Then, the winning gladiator would stand above the loser with his sword drawn. The crowd gives thumbs up? He kills him. Thumbs down? He goes free. 95% of the time… there was blood. We go to the moves to see a scary, fake story. They went to see real-life murder. Crazy.

They ripped up most of the floor in the Coliseum in order to show what was underneath. It looks like a maze, but it’s basically dressing rooms. They would keep the starved lions down there before they brought them up on stage to eat people. They would also keep the horses down there, and the gladiators would get ready below stage before their “performance.” 

After we ate lunch we saw Il Portico D’Ottavia (aka the house that Augustus built for his sister in 23 B.C.).

During our walk, we came upon a square where we saw a cat. Then we saw another cat, and another cat, and another cat…!!! Our professor told us that it was an outdoor cat sanctuary where over 500 cats live. I guess people come and take care of them there. They were really friendly and really well fed, some were even pregnant. The Romans should probably listen to Bob and spay and neuter before all of Rome gets taken over by cats.

Then we walked to The Pantheon.

The Pantheon is massive… I guess that sort of goes for everything in Rome. But the Pantheon was free to get in to because it’s now used as a church. The main feature is, of course, the oculus. According to my professor, no one can figure out, to this day, how the Romans got that giant piece of glass up there that long ago.

But the oculus is the only source of light in the entire building. It lets in air, sunlight, and rain. When it rains… there are drains in the floor for the water.

After we got back to our hotel and relaxed for a few hours, Bethany, Amy, Caitlyn, Lydia, Yelena, and I decided to go out to dinner. We found the cutest Italian restaurant sort of tucked in away from the main roads. If you have the energy to walk away from all the touristy, busy areas the food gets better and the prices go down significantly.

All the employees were super friendly and it was probably the second best meal I’ve had in Italy so far. I had bruschetta as an appetizer, spinach and olive pizza as my main course, and chocolate cake for desert… all this for only 14 euro! (It was a special) Since we weren’t spending a lot on the meal, we decided to split 2 bottles of wine; a pink and a white. So good!

After a great meal and a few glasses of wine, we met up with the rest of the CCI group at a bar. It was probably the most American bar in the entire city of Rome… leave it to us to find it. We had lots of fun, but we left after it got so crowded that we couldn’t move.

Bethany took a creeper picture with the bouncer… he was such a tall Asian!