27.02.2009 - Friday

ROMA city buses!! They crack me up!!

The 'other David'..in the Borghese by Bernini

The huge logs in the middle of the park :)

Today I had to wake up at 5:30am because we had to be to the train station for class at 7:45am at Porta Romana, the train station that is further away from the dorms. At 5:45am, Ry called and we talked for about 15 minutes, then I got ready for the day and Cassie, Bethany, Chris and I left for the train station at 7:10am. On our way to the train station, we had to stop and buy a BIRG at the newspaper stand. BIRGs are a one day ticket for the train and all the metros/buses wherever you go, so it’s a good deal. They are 9euros and just the tickets to get to and from Roma are 9euros, so then you get your metros/buses free for the day basically. Then we walked across the street to the train station and got on the train. It left at 7:58am. Once we got to Roma, we met up with our teacher (she lives there) and went to go see a few churches near by. Both of them were Rococo style, one had more color than the other, but both had large oval domes. They were absolutely freezing inside these churches!! Definitely more cold inside than it was outside. It was like 60 degrees in Roma, perfect temp. Ha, Arizonans…I heard it is like already 90 degrees there, wow, I am going to die when I get home!! Especially working outside and not being use to it, well not really, I LOVE the heat, so I am excited to go back to work, it’s just going to take some time to get use to the hot heat again!! :) After we visited the churches, we had an hour and a half for lunch and we were able to do whatever we wanted to do, we just had to meet back at the Spanish Steps at 1:30pm. Cassie, Bethany, Corinne, Alex, Mike and I went to a sit down restaurant where I ordered a pizza. At 1:30, we met everyone at the steps, except for our teacher, and walked over to the Borghese Gallery. We walked through this huge park and it took about 30 minutes from the Steps to get to the gallery, where we met up with our teacher, ha, I don’t know her name, it’s a really long Italiano name, and I honestly don’t know it!! Haha, once we were all there, we went around back to look at the garden where I saw the biggest lemons I have ever seen!! They were bigger than grapefruits, no joke!! We also saw the bird house that is around back. There were lots of beautiful flowers all around, I really enjoyed it. Then, we went inside the Gallery and you had to check your bags in and MY CAMERA!!! I was not too happy about that, because it is my new big camera, aka not cheap, I was freaking out because they were just grabbing the bags without a care and I didn’t have room in my purse for my camera. So once it was my turn to hand in my belongings, the one lady helping us, gave me a bag to put my camera in and then before handing it to her, I looked at her and was like ‘please take care of this,’ she was really sweet and winked at me! Ha, ay, I am just very protective of my things, so I was freaking out a little bit. :/ Little did they know I had my other camera in my pocket of my jacket, so I was able to take pictures, which you are not allowed to!! :) There is just no way I am going to travel to these places and not get any pictures, that is just ridiculous!! Ha :) After spending a few hours in the Gallery talking about most of the pieces, we got our bags/camera back and left for the train station. It was already 5pm and the Colosseo was closed, closed since 3:30pm and we were planning on touring that today. So on the way to the metro, we went back through the park and saw these HUGE trees which were laying on the ground like they must have fallen and then the bottom and tops were cut off, so it was just one long log. Cassie and I decided we wanted some pictures, so we snuck away from the group and literally ran to the logs to snap some shots!! Tomorrow we are going to go back to see the Colosseo and the garden near it. I am excited!! I LOVE the Colosseo!!! The train ride home was great!! It only had 3 stops to make and the final stop was Porta Fiorentina (our stop), so the ride went by very quickly!! :) I was home by 7:45pm and had dinner after I put down all my stuff. I had another wrap tonight along with ants on a log!! Mmm…it had been years since I have had ants on a log, my mom would make them all the time when Sara and I were younger. When I was at Coop a few nights ago, I saw the celery and thought about ants on a log, so I had to get them!! :) They were soo good, so I had two long logs and I also enjoyed some plain carrot sticks :) After dinner, I got ready for bed and hit the sac. Tomorrow Cass and I are going to take the 8:58am train to ROMA!! YAY for the COLOSSEO!!! I had to get some rest, today was a long day full of walking, which is great, it just tires you out!!
CIAO everyone, LOVE YOU!!