Rome in a Day
By Aubrey Staton '22
We started our third day in Rome bright and early! We took the metro halfway across Rome and met our guide, Manuela (she was awesome), by 9:00am. We started at the Spanish steps and talked about Pope Sixtus V brought fresh drinking water to Rome for all of the citizens to enjoy. This was huge on our tour as we saw a ton of fountains and bottle refill stations.
We continued on our tour and appreciated the beauty in the scenery and architecture throughout all the buildings, even apartments! Then we made our way to the Trevi Fountain! This was many of ours’ favorite part of the day. The fountain is HUGE, taking up a whole block by itself. Manuela told us that there’s an old wives tale that says if you throw a coin in the fountain over your left shoulder, using your right hand, you’ll come back to Rome. And guess who did that wrong?? 🙋🏼♀️🙋🏼♀️ oops.
E and J took their turn at using the lovers drinking fountain. When the three of us looked up, we saw quite the sight of a couple 😘. We thought we were in Italy not France!!! But European couples are just really, REALLY in love over here.
We moved on to the Pantheon which was built in 19 BC, making it one of the oldest buildings still (mostly) intact in the world. The tour continued and we stumbled upon a literal hole in the ground, which actually turned out to be the ruins of the Roman Senate where Julius Caesar was killed in 44BC.
The next place we stopped was Piazza Navona where we saw a huge palace and fountain made for one of the popes. It also highlighted the architectural battle between Bernini and Borromini, two artist heavily involved with the creation and design of many famous Italian landmarks.
After that, we walked to the Tiber River and had a wonderful view of St. Peter’s Basilica. We also saw a TON of helicopters fly over ahead. We were told it was the Italian Day of Republic and there were many important generals being flown in so the helicopters were acting as security. I even got to see the colored smoke in the Italian flag format that the fighter jets released over the city.
After we split up for lunch or a quick run back to the hotel, we met at the Vatican Museum. Our tour was wonderful and no one complained and our tour guide was great and all of the headsets worked and we finished on time and it was the best day ever :) …or something like that.
We learned a lot about the history of the Vatican and spent a LOT of time talking about the paintings involved. We even got to see works from 2/4 of the ninja turtles! The Sistine Chapel was far from what we expected with people talking and taking pictures as they wanted, so it wasn’t nearly as strict as we anticipated, we even snuck a couple pictures ourselves.
After the Sistine Chapel, we booked it back to our hotel to put our feet up for awhile before dinner. We got changed and headed out for our 30 minute bus ride toward our restaurant. This was our first dinner as a team at a sit down restaurant and many of us enjoyed our first glass of Italian wine!
Post dinner, we all split our separate ways. My group adventured through the streets of Rome and found our way to the shopping (surprise, surprise) district. We continued on and found, quite possibly, the coolest candy shops ever, where we picked up a few things. Then we hopped back on the metra and back to our hotel we went to get ready for the next day! - Aubrey Staton '22
Credits:
Created with an image by petrrgoskov - "Trevi Fountain, Fontana di Trevi in Rome. Italy summer morning"