Smicks Take Roma 2012

Last week began pretty rainy, which left my roomies and me mostly inside catching up on school work (well, at least that’s what we intended). In reality, we had several more roomie bonding experiences including singing Hillary Duff and Taylor Swift and taking strange videos of each other. Some crazy stuff goes on in room 603 at the Tiz, I’m telling you. We were a bit productive though when it came to planning trips—we’re going to Cinque Terre November 2-4, the first weekend when we have Friday off, and then we’re headed to London for Thanksgiving break!

Other highlights of the week included going out for wine and cheese and having the most delicious parmigiano ever!! Also, of course more gelato flavors at Giolitti. The other day I had a combination of mela (apple) and canella (cinnamon)…this is going on the favorite list. Wednesday I explored a new area of town that is surprisingly super close to the hotel, the Jewish Ghetto. Don’t worry mom and dad—this is not a true ghetto anymore. It’s actually a really cute area with restaurants, bakeries, shops, a Synagogue, and ancient ruins. Thanks to my handy Rick Steves tour book, I learned a great deal on my exploration of the area. One of the most interesting parts was seeing the square where the Nazis threatened to take all the Jews to concentration camps unless the community came up with 110 pounds of gold in 24 hours. Named after the date of this Nazi occupation, the square is called Largo 16 Ottobre 1943.

Il Colosseo? Guess again. This is actually a theatre in the Jewish Ghetto and was built BEFORE the Colosseum!

On Thursday, the weather became much warmer so I went back to Villa Borghese with Cara and walked around the park, people-watched, and caught up on some reading while enjoying a magnificent view of the city below. Then on Friday after my one and only class of the day, Shannon, Hannah, Karli, and I ventured to the beach for the first time. Of course, Rome isn’t quite on the coast, but it is a relatively short trip there. We took the metro and 1,50 euro and about 45 minutes later, we were at the Terranean Sea! It wasn’t quite a white sandy beach (rather, dark sand and a little rocky) but it was beautiful nonetheless and a nice change of pace from the city. It truly felt like we had entered a different world. Hannah, our designated photographer (and an amazing one at that!) for the trip took some great pics of each of us….see below :) The way back from the beach was a bit more eventful. While we were waiting for the metro to arrive, a man who spoke very good English informed us that that particular train was not working and proceeded to direct us to a bus which would take us back to Rome. We found our way to this bus, took it to the first stop, and then waited in what seemed like the middle of nowhere for about 10 minutes for the second bus onto the city. We stood in the crowded aisle way the whole hour trip back, holding onto the handlebars so we wouldn’t go flying forward with each jolting stop! Gave me a bit of a headache and made us a half hour late for dinner at the Tiziano, but all in all, was a worthwhile adventure. Up until this point, we’ve been walking everywhere in Rome, so it’s good to get familiar with the public transportation. We even met a nice mom and daughter from the Netherlands who spoke excellent English on the bus. The daughrer was 13 and told us all about how English is one of the SIX languages she speaks. Talk about making me feel inadequate! Friday night we had a roomies night in complete with wine, cheese, bread, fruit, and Friends reruns. The chill night was just what we needed because the following morning we had to be on the bus by 7am for a full day of lectures and tours.

A beautiful day at Villa Borghese. Who would have thought Rome would have palm trees?!

Roomie night in the 603 <3

These cards from home made my day! Thanks mama!
Blog readers, I'm always happy to accept mail....address in first blog post :)

Beach day on Friday...yep, I've fallen in love with Italy.

Our tours on Saturday took us to Tarquinia and Cerveteri, two towns north of Rome. At both we explored the necropoli, or cities of the dead. We were only able to peek through windows of the Etruscan tombs in Tarquinia because they are sealed to protect the paintings on the tomb walls. In Cerveteri, the 3,000 year old tombs are carved out of bedrock, so we were actually able to go inside several. Kinda creepy but also really cool. In between seeing the two towns we had a picnic on the beach in Tarquinia—it was 75 degrees and beautiful…couldn’t ask for anything better! By the time we got back to Rome, it was around 6pm, so needless to say we were all exhausted! I caught up on sleep yesterday—that’s what Sundays are for, right?! Now it’s time to go full-force into another week of classes and exploring this fabulous city!

Following our professors as they climbed into 3,000 year-old Etruscan tombs!

Roomies <3