Prego, Roma!!!

We had a wonderful weekend in Rome and were very sad to leave it for Spain again.
We went out to a lovely pizza and bruschetta dinner that Thursday evening when we arrived. It was our first glimpse of delicious Italian food and a great way to start off our weekend.

Friday began our 3 day Roman art/history intensive. We started off strong, heading to the Vatican in the morning. We spent several hours exploring the Church, Museum and of course the Sistine Chapel. Emily lead me and gave me a lovely and education tour of the Vatican city. From there we grabbed a quick street panini and headed off to wander the streets to our afternoon plans of visiting the Roman Forum and Collosseum. As we ambled around and poked into the shops, then stopped for lunch for some more pizzas, by the time we got to the sights they were closing! At that point, the rainy and cold day had caught up to us and we realized we were quite exhausted. We headed back to the hotel to rest before having another nice dinner out.

Lots of head statues

Rafael and Michelangelo

Saturday we attempted to wake up early as we had lots to visit. We were hoping to get to visit the Borghese Museum of art but unfortunately we hadn't made a reservation soon enough and it was booked for the weekend. With that in mind we headed straight towards the Forum and Collosseum. We spent quite a bit of time at each of those, as the Forum was huge and ideally we could have spent an entire day there. After the sightseeing we had planned to seek out the Jewish ghetto of Rome. It mainly consisted of one short street and the synagogue. With all of our excitement and exhaustion of the trip we forgot to keep in mind that Saturday is the day of rest. The synagogue was closed as well as most of the street. Fortunately we found one small hole in the wall restaurant at the end of the street where we had the most amazing authentic Italian lunch - Pasta and Caprese salads.

View from the Forum of the Collosseum

Outside the Collosseum

The Collosseum!

Saturday night we went out with some friends and explored the Rome night life, using a mixture of Spanish, English and a few words in Italian to get around - quite the adventure. We met a new friend, Dr. Gabo who became our tour guide Sunday as we ran around the city one last time before we had to leave in the afternoon. We went to several churches to see important works as well as the Trevi Fountain, before the most exciting adventure of all - search for the best gelateria in Rome! ... unfortunately we failed. But we did find a top quality place with muffin flavored, so that could be #2?
We sadly made our way back to the hotel to meet the group. We said our goodbyes to Rome and hopped on the bus to the airport...