Sunday, June 24, 2012

When in Rome

A major reason that I chose to take the Roman Renaissance history class that I did was the lure of a promised excursion to Rome.  I know, casual, just a field trip to Rome. No big deal, get your permission slip signed and pack a lunch.  But seriously though, how neat is that?!?

We were set to meet with up with our class on the first morning in June at the Piazza del Popolo.  A girl that I met in my class and I decided we wanted to check out Rome a few more days than that so we decided to head out on the previous Friday. Most of our class was staying at a hotel that was a bit expensive in the city ran by nuns.  Since we were staying a few more days and were traveling on a budget of two kids who've been galavanting across Europe for the previous four months, we decided to use the trusty hostelworld.com.  We ended up at Camping Fabulous, seriously, that's the name.  And I have to say it was rather appropriately named.  We were in a two person tent in the middle of some sort of resort village right outside of Rome.  I have to say it was well worth the 9 euros per night.  It even had a pool!  It was great, except for the minor inconvenience of the sunburn we received, due to our pasty skin as a result of the overcast haven of Holland.


 
Waiting for the subway at the end of the line near our campground.



On our first day, we decided to check out the city and hit some of the key things that we didn't want to miss because our class covered only Rome during the Renaissance Era.  We walked through the Circus Maximus, a decrepit area that, when it existed, held more than any other stadium, ever.  A tour guide we overheard said that it held 300,000 people.  That's even more impressive because, at the time, there were only 2 million people living in the city, but most of the time only 1 million were in town.

We also checked out the Trevi Fountain, the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele, and the Spanish steps...



 The next day we ventured out to Ostia Antica near the coastline.  It was an old abandoned city from thousands of years ago.  We found it even cooler than the Roman Forum because you're allowed to climb in and out of the ruins. It was massive: a whole town left standing complete with public buildings, houses and even a really cool stadium sort of thing.








On the way back we were right next to the sea.  We couldn't very well get that close to the sea in Italy and not go in the water.  We wandered out onto the beach that evening and went into the water.  I have to say, it was well worth it.


The next three mornings and early afternoons were occupied by class time.  A component of the class required each of us to give a twenty minute presentation of a key monument, building or church that was relevant to the time period that we had been studying in our class.  It was actually a really cool structure so we didn't have to listen to our professors talk the whole time, but we were still able to learn about some of the things that we were seeing.

After our class time for the day, we spent the rest of the afternoons and evenings checking out the other aspects of Rome that we missed.  Although it was just two of us that were staying separately, we still ended up spending time with a lot of the members of our class in our free time as we were exploring the city.  The last night, we all went out to dinner with our professor.  I think I can confidently say that the food in Italy was one of my favorites from all of the countries that we've been to.
Colosseum



Casa Sant Angelo


St. Peter's Basilica





It was a really amazing trip.  It was very cool to see first hand all of the things that we've been studying all semester.  Everything about the week was really fun and it was well worth missing a couple of other lectures to experience on-sight lectures with my class.  I think I learned more from the portion of the class in Rome than I did the entire rest of the semester in the classroom.