FREE DAY TO EXPLORE ROME
Today was a very nice peaceful day. Our class was given the day off to do whatever we wished in Rome. My roommates and I decided to begin our day after sleeping in. We didn't head out to the streets till about 1pm. We started by going a different way then we ever have before, purposelessly trying to get ourselves lost in Rome for two reasons. One, when you get lost, you tend to find new places that you would never find any other way. Two, getting lost is a good way of learning how to navigate Rome with our Roma maps, which is actually one of our class objectives!
At one point in time, as we were making our way back to the city of Rome, we found ourselves next to the Rose Garden. This was quite a hike from our hotel. We were almost to Ostia Anica where we took the Metro train to, earlier in the week. One we realized this we made the attempt to find St. Paul's Church. We navigated towards it and followed the street signs and before long, we hit a dead end. There was an elderly Italian woman whom we asked if she knew where the church was, but she assured us it was too far to walk, so we decided to walk back into Rome. Once we were back in a familiar area we went to the Trevi Fountain. All week we have been waiting to see it at night, we were told it was so beautiful at night, but we had not yet made it over yet. Along the way we stopped at many shops, mainly just up class shops and of course a few more touristy shops for trinkets and such.
At this time it was only around 6pm and none of us were hungry yet, however we did want something. So, we headed for the coffee shop by the Colosseum for a Granite. A granite is a type of coffee drink; it has whipped cream and smooth frozen iced coffee. We all agreed it was like heaven in a cup. After getting our fix we headed back over to Trevi Fountain and claimed our seat for the next three hours or so until we were hungry.
*My roommates, Amber (left) and Shafonna (right) at the Trevi Fountain!
If I recall it was after 10pm by the time we decided to go get food. In Rome, this is actually pretty normal. The Romans work from sun up to around 12:30-1:00pm and then everything closes and they don't reopen until around 3pm. During this time, they go home, have lunch and rest. Then they go back to work until around 7pm, which is around the time they eat dinner here.
Let me say one thing about dinner. I ordered the wrong meal. I thought I really wanted to try Carbonara. Which is pasta in a rich sauce consisting of raw egg, percutto (ham) and cheese. I found out later that just like steaks some restaurants can cook it correctly and others cannot. Apparently this nice, high class, restaurant was either having a bad night, rushed our meals, because they were hopping, or just cannot cook this dish properly, from my understanding of how it is to be cooked and served. Needless to say the first couple of bites my pasta was very good, but after that, I was like oh, this was a very bad idea. So, I had an upset stomach when I went to bed. All is good though, because the papal audience is in less than eight hours.
Ciao, KT
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