Happy February everyone! So I know I haven’t
updated in a very long time so here it goes. Since I last wrote I’ve had 11
days of school and 11 days of travel and it’s been amazing...though
inconceivably tiring. So school is going well, not too much to report on except
midterms are coming up next week and that is a very frightening thought! But on
the travel side, there is too much to report but I’ll try to hit the high
points of my travels and post some photos and videos for everyone to try to
understand the great sights I’ve seen.
To start off February I went to Rome and
Pompeii. This had always been a life goal of mine to see the ruins so at least
a couple things were checked off my bucket list that weekend! When I first
arrived at the airport, I was so incredibly thankful that English was one of
the main languages everything was written in! Plus, with my knowledge of Latin,
I can almost pick out some Italian words too so it wasn’t bad navigating the
airport and streets at all! I caught a cab to the St. Peter’s Square and met up
with my CIEE friend Drew for an AMAZING first meal in Rome. We both had the
Carbanara, which the place was famous for and it was truly mind-blowing! It
could only go up from there! The next day we met up with Drew’s friend Lincoln also
from GWU and started our immense walking tour of Rome. First up was the Colosseum. It is one of the
best-kept monuments from the Roman Empire and it is just stunning! It took
about two hours to fully complete the tour of the Colosseum—so massive and so
much to learn from the audio guides we picked up. From there we went walking…we
got lost...and just kept walking. I swear we probably walked a good 15+ miles
on Friday. We saw the Pantheon, the Circus Maximum, the Trevi Fountain (which
was still having work done on it but still beautiful), the Forum, Palatine and Capitoline
hills, and more. Luckily we had good weather through most of it, and ate a
fantastic pizza lunch next to the Pantheon so we were able to go all day!
However the night was still young. We quickly returned to our rooms before
going back out for dinner and bar hopping. We had another wonderful dinner near
the Tiber before going out to a local bar which was very festive yet the crowd
was of a significantly older population so we decided to go on to the next bar.
The next one did not disappoint! Filled with tons of young college kids from
all over the world, we all had fun talking to people who were either studying
in Rome or visiting from their own study abroad semesters. It was very fun and
had good food around it too! I had gelato and Drew had a gyro as we headed back
toward the Vatican City where our B&Bs were located. The next morning was
quite early, as we were to tour the Vatican at 9am! The Vatican was truly
amazing. It was gorgeous from the outside statues to the huge inside
tapestries. Again finding ourselves full of wonder, we toured throughout the
Vatican taking in everything during our 3-hour stay. As a somewhat religious
Christian I was filled with awe at just how beautiful and how well sustained
the chapels and all the relics were. The history too was amazing—the fact that
this small, well-sustained building surrounded by a tiny city which could be
circled in about 35minutes walking… at one point (really from the collapse of
the Romans until the mid-1700s) was the capital of the world! From there we had
another great pizza lunch nearby before I broke off from the boys to go and
continue to site-see. I hopped on a Hop-On Hop-Off bus and did a 3-hour loop
around the city going to the more northern and farther out sides of the city,
which was fun. Plus the bus also had an audio guide, so I got to learn and
re-learn more history about the city in the past and present. I ended my night
with an awesome 3-course meal plus gelato nearby the B&B and prepared for
Pompeii!
So Pompeii…the highlight of my study abroad so
far!
To get to Pompeii you have to go down to Naples
(which is not as beautiful and as nice as many people have said) then you take a
tram down the coast, which is absolutely gorgeous as you have Mt Vesuvius on
one side and the Mediterranean on the other. Then you get off at the Pompeii
stop and even from the tram you can see the city walls. For a refresher,
Pompeii was a Roman city back in the olden, golden days of the Roman Empire
however in 79AD Mt. Vesuvius erupted and surprised the town completely. No one
was ready for the eruption and afterward it was seen as a city with a curse,
which is why even today the ruins are in such good shape. One of the coolest
yet saddest parts of Pompeii is the casts of Pompeii victims. In the 1970s when
they continued excavations, one smart guy realized that there were spaces in
the ash that were people and pets so he decided to create casts of these people
and dogs and cats which are on display there. These casts show just how
unprepared these poor people were and how scared they must have been too. Just
touring around I learned so much and got to explore all different buildings and
travel back into how these Romans lived. Just walking on the roads (that are
still there) looking up at Mt. Vesuvius, I couldn’t imagine how frightening the
experience must have been. But, at the same time it has allowed for people like
me to live my childhood dream of reliving Roman times and figuring out how such
amazing societies lived so long ago. Getting home to Brussels was an ordeal I
won't go into here but it was something…. anyway I hope you liked part 1 of my
February blog. Part 2 up soon.
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