An end and a beginning

The Pantheon

The Trevi Fountain at night.

Sorry for the delay in posting about the end of Rome but life got in the way, per usual.  Essentially, Rome had a lot of walking involved.  That first walking tour, according to the plan, took us through the streets of Rome to see different Piazzas and monuments and ruins in the evening.  The highlight?  The Trevi Fountain.  Here, we met some other Americans from Nebraska and just hung out for about an hour outside one of the most beautiful pieces of art.  Obviously, I tossed a coin into the fountain to ensure my return to Rome.  We finished the night in the Piazza Republica, the home of a massive fountain at the center of a round-about.  It was beautiful.  We eventually made it back to our hotel, exhausted, and with not much of a plan for the next day.  But, regardless, we dutifully woke up early checked out of the hotel and headed back into the city.  We wanted to see the Roman Baths, but couldn't find them.  Instead, we found ourselves inside a church in the Piazza Republica that housed a Newtonian exhibit.  It was really interesting how Rome, what one could argue is the heart of Western Civilization, has such a strong mixture of art, religion, politics, science, and history.  Everything that we deem important as a civilization is woven together into a tight fabric in a living museum.  Rome is essentially a chronicle of man's greatest achievements, and it's in places like that church where religion and science meet and are bound together by art and history that everything we've been taught in school, everything we've been told is important comes together in a tangible sense.

Meanwhile, we peaced out of the church and headed to a crypt that was decorated with the bones of 4000 monks, some of which still had tissue attached...it was uncomfortable to say the least.  Once we escaped the creepy pit, we essentially did the walking tour from the night before again, but backwards.  It was an awesome opportunity to see the sights both at night and in the day, but my feet hated it.  We made it to a market in the Campo di Fiori, where I mastered my haggling skills.  I bought 20 key chains for my friends back at home.  The set price? 2 euro each.  The final price?  1.50.  Not much, but whatever, I was proud.  We later found ourselves in a war memorial museum thing.  Interesting, but seemingly out of place.  It's easy to forget that Rome has modern history as well.

We had some final time to kill and decided to check out the island in the middle of the tiber that runs through Rome.  In the past, walls were built around the island and decorated to make it look like a giant boat.  It has served as some form of a hospital for over 1000 years.  And that about wraps up Rome.

The Tiber River.

In the week following, I made bread and strawberry/pineapple jam as my final project for my class.  On our final full day in Italy, a group of us headed out to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Mediterranean.  Again, there was a solid plan with some wiggle room but very specific directions of how to get from place to place.  Did that stop us from getting lost?  Nope.  But, our being lost did lead to my ego being inflated even more.  I went to ask a police officer directions in Italian and, instead of responding in English as had happened many times at the beginning of the trip, this guy responds in rapid Italian.  Unfortunately, that was completely unhelpful and my look of bewilderment gave me away and he said "Oh?  You speak English?" and then proceeded to give me the directions in English. The tower was amazing.  It turns out that it isn't the only thing in Pisa or even the only thing on the grounds.  It was built as a clocktower for the church right next to it.  It started leaning by the time the second story was completed, so the architects simply made the leaning side taller to compensate.  The added weight only accelerated the leaning.  In 2002 an effort was made to restore the tower to its original leaning angle and to anchor it there.  So, no worries about it falling in the future.  A hilarious part of this experience, though, is after having taken your own cheesy picture holding up the tower, you look around and see another 50 people doing similar poses, and just looking completely idiotic.  It's great, big fun.

By the time we made it to the Mediterranean, the weather had taken a turn for the worse.  Which, was fine, since the beach was actually more just a network of giant rock and a small patch of sand.  It was beautiful, though, with the rain clouds coming in and the island visible off in the distance.  I dutifully touched the water and we headed home.

The remnants of the wall used to make the island look like a boat.

The following day, we show up in the Rome airport to discover our flight has been delayed 6 hours and that we would be forced to stay overnight in Chicago.  So we spent the next 4 hours drinking wine, playing cards, and eating.  There was also some window shopping since the Rome airport is actually a giant mall of high end stores.  Gucci, Prada, Armani, etc. all had stores there.  We finally made it to Chicago and were put up in amazing hotel rooms.  It felt great to be back in the states.  Needless to say, I passed out immediately.

A bridge to the island.

Somehow, after all of these adventures, I made it home safely, in one piece.  I have a new found appreciation for the beauty of Little Lexington, VA and the United States in general.  I love this country and I am looking forward to my newest adventures in NYC starting next week.  So stay tuned, and cheers to the daily adventure (and the leaning tower of Pisa pics).



PS  I actually just moved in to NYC and there's a bunch to talk about...I've been intending to post this for about a week and I just got the time/internet connection.