Spring Break -- Rome

For Spring Break, I was graciously invited by the Hall family to join them in Rome. I accepted before they had finished asking.

For those that want to check out the pictures I took, I am now using Facebook to host them. Pictures from Rome are here, and pictures from the rest of the trip are here. Please let me know if you have trouble seeing them.

Rome is an incredible city -- the amount of history that is still tangibly present is mind-boggling. Our apartment was in between the Coloseum (the site of the gladiatorial battles and an engineering marvel in its day) and the Circo Maximo (a stadium that seated 250,000 people) for instance. It was very nice of them, and I apologize for my shoes, which were funkier in stench than style.

We explored the city's countless sights and monuments, and also made sure to take the "vacation" part of the vacation into account and got into some good, old fashioned laziness. I am not going to talk about the food for fear of having flashbacks that will make my current meals' ineptitude that much more profound. Suffice to say that describing the food generally required a thesaurus. I will, however, give a special shout out to my mother Katherine, who not only birthed me, but also recommended a restaurant that was literally one block away and was the one of, if not the, best meals I (or the Hall family) had ever had -- a restaurant so good that I left the plate clean enough to be used again right away.

this was taken post-meal I swear to god

It was cool to walk around what was the Forum and get a sense of what it might have been like for someone coming from outside of Rome -- a provincial town like Valencia, for instance -- and imagine their reaction to seeing such a built-up, crowded, busy place. It was also cool to think about the history spanning the fall of the Romans to present day, and how each culture felt that the Roman ruins were important enough that they needed to be preserved (some more than others).

 This arch was built by slaves from Israel, commemorating the Roman conquest of that particular chunk of the Earth.

old stuff

We visited the Borghese gallery, where we saw some cool sculptures and paintings.  We went to Palatine Hill (not Palatine, Illinois) and saw where the Emperors had lived. We crossed the border into the Vatican City, where we did not see the Pope. We saw the famous Trevi Fountain, the incredible Pantheon, and many churches.

the Pantheon

 I had a great time, and Rome would be one of the city's I'd most like to return to. The city was jam-packed with tourists because it was Easter Sunday, so it was hard to really get to see the city beyond the tourist attractions. I'd still like to see a game there, check out their famous Sunday market, and eat so much food.

The hoards gather to hear the Pope talk on Good Friday