The past couple of days have been so crazy! Friday we took the train to Orvieto to visit the Gordon students who are studying abroad there. It was so beautiful there and it was certainly perfect for an art student to go study there. We got to see the Il Duomo, which is a huge church that was built between 1290 and 1320. It was so gorgeous and huge! It was amazing to think that the people back then could build something like that. The ornate carvings on the side depicted the story of Creation from Genesis. The interior was equally as massive and had amazing stained glass artwork as well as many of the panels of window made of alabaster. It was incredible to be standing in such a master-piece.
That night we left for Rome from Orvieto around 5 and took the train. We got to Rome and went to find our hostel. I had never stayed in a hostel before and I was nervous about staying there. It was called Ciao Bella and we had to search all over two streets for the place! It took us a good while until we finally found it. It was inconspicuous because there was no sign, just the name on the door buzzer. We were so relieved when we finally did find it and luckily we were all put in the same room. I was pretty nervous throughout the whole ordeal, but luckily we were safe because our group was so large.
Since we found the hostel at 9, many of us were ready for dinner. We went to a sweet little restaurant and I got this really good pasta dish with bacon in it. Everyone was ready to go sightseeing after dinner, so we went to the Trevi Fountain, because we heard it was more spectacular at night. It really was lovely with the light playing off the water and the statues. It was quite impressive and I was taking about a billion pictures. After Trevi, we ventured over to the Pantheon , which was also quite spectacular. I'm amazed at just how large all of these ancient buildings are. I stood in front of the door of the Pantheon and was so tiny compared to it. I could not get over how massive it is.
On the way back we were walking back to where the hostel was and four American boys came up to us, drunk, and asked if we had any weed. We all looked at each other in disbelief and said no. They then asked us where we were from and we said Boston. They told us they were from Canada and then used some obscenities to describe poor Canada. We saw them again fifteen minutes later and one stood next to me and he reeked of beer. I was so disgusted. We had, at this point, gotten lost and they asked how to get somewhere. My friend, Ricky, laughed because we were lost and sober and we knew they'd never find what they were looking for drunk.
We got back to the hostel after being lost for about an hour and by then everyone was done. We got ready for bed and went to sleep around 2 am. At about 3 or 4 in the morning we were all awoken by loud banging on a door down the hall. A drunk guy lost his key and decided to banging on the door every five minutes for the next hour. Ricky and Danny were going to go yell at him but on the off chance that he was dangerous, they decided against it.
So after an awful night's sleep, we got up at 8:30 am and got ready for, again, another busy day. At the hostel we met a guy, Adam, from North Carolina and he was by himself, so we asked if he wanted to join us around Rome. He agreed and was really nice and chatty with us.
We started the day with the Vatican and that was really beautiful. There were so many different statues around it. We only stood in the outdoor part of it, but it was still impressive. I was amazed at how vast it is. All of these monuments are so large and amazing. It's a tragedy that buildings aren't made like that anymore.
After the Vatican, we went to the Colosseum, which was really impressive. It was so large and old, but really something. I went inside with Ashley, Adam, Danny, and Ricky and took a ton of pictures... of course. I was amazed at the maze at the bottom of it. We were all amazed at how many people would have fit inside of it. It was just so massive!
On the way over, we saw the Roman Forum, which was cool. It looked like a graveyard for Roman ruins. There were all these huge chunks of ornately carved pieces laying everywhere.
At 4:30pm we left to catch our train that was around 5:45 pm, only to learn that the direct train back to Perugia was not running on Saturdays. We ended up leaving at 6:43 pm on a train to Florence and then catching another that would take us to Assisi. The train to Florence took three hours and the Assisi train took just one. It was so exciting to see Assisi all lit up from the train and we all got up, ready to catch the bus that would be arriving one minute after the train stopped. So we booked it off the train and ran to the exit. But, the train stop looked different from the one from the day before... because we got off a stop early. We couldn't get back on in time and had to walk back to Assisi. It was quite the walk and a kind elderly woman gave us directions on how to get back as well as an address to a hostel, in case we couldn't walk anymore. We were told to walk to a large church and go left. While we walked there were tons of cars going by and honking and waving flags because the Italian soccer team won against Madrid in Madrid. We waved a t-shirt and yelled "coucho," which means "soccer" in Italian.
After the church we got to a tunnel that cars drove through and we were confused about what to do. We thought it was to unsafe to walk through so we went to find a different route, until Ricky stopped a taxi van. We were so thankful and we split into two taxi vans to go back to Assisi. We were so happy to have gotten in them and that we didn't have to walk anymore.
We got back to CEFID safely and happy about our successful trip. Through all the stress and multiple times we got lost, we still had a good time and saw a lot of Rome. I bonded a lot with my peers and we all enjoyed ourselves. We now have many great laughs and memories with each other, which is the most important thing.
Ciao!
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