Italy commences! 1st and 2nd April

And so we left for Italy at noon the first Sunday of vacation!  My host sister, Aline drove me to Angleur station, where I met up with the 2 buses that loaded full of exchange students from all over, with a lot of latinos!  We always have so much fun together.  And so we started to drive south to Rome.   We drove through France and saw the alps, passed through Switzerland at about 11:30.

Off we go!

Supper break in France at a rest stop.

Jimena from Mexico and me at the rest stop

It was really beautiful, but i don't think it's well shown in the  pictures.

3 am stop in the Alps.  When travelling by private bus in Europe, in order to regulate travel, and carbon dioxide emissions or something,  a bus cannot drive for more than 3 hours without a 20 minute break, or 5 hours without a 45 minute break!  ergo we stopped at 3 am.

Sleeping on that bus was a disaster.  I was coughing and a bit sick already anyway, and there was not enough room for everyone to lie down in the aisle (questionably legal) and then, just, yeah.

Finally we got to Rome!  We were meant to arrive in Rome at around 7, but we got stuck in traffic and didn't end up getting in until around 10, so at that point we just walked to our lunch rendez vous and had our first pasta in Italy!  It was pretty good...  The salad and olives were really really good, though.  We cut out our visit to the Ponte d'angeli and the fort, but we saw the vatican museum, St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel, although photos are not allowed inside the chapel.  But you know, I saw the spark of creation.

St Peters

Courtyard at the vatican

Stairs in the vatican

Vatican museum.  One of the few remaining original bronze statues.
It's hercules

St Peter's Square with Catherine

Before we went into the museum.  The dome of St Peters is  only almost just as big as the pantheon

In the columns at St Peter's square. Klaudia

In the museum

The fort castle thing

Ponte d'angeli with Vicki of NZ and Josie of South Africa

Day one finished with the drive to the hotel, on the coast of the Mediterranean, about 45 minutes drive from Rome.  Had pasta there (most likely) and then popped into bed.  My roommates, Alex Johnston (canada) and Connor Seibenaler (states) and I planned every morning of Italy to go running before we got started with the day, so we set our alarms to about 5:30.  How was the run?  See next post.