Antique Rome 3rd April

What it looked like at 7am when we slept in.  Poor Klaudia was the only one who actually got up and she waited in the lobby 

View out the window

The courtyard in the hotel

Beginning of Ancient Rome

Ben and Catherine (S.A)

Ben and Juan (Arg)  the basement of the Colosseum

Roman poses with Jillian and Caroline (Can)

I wanted to show off my Roman sandals in the Colosseum

Caroline (Can), Claudia (our Italian tour guide, in english) Sylvie, Alex, Jillian (all Can).
The orange jellyfish that we followed about

The stairs inside the Colosseum!  That impressed me the most I think was the stair system.  

Just outside the colosseum.  With Tasha Fox (US)
We were a large group.

Roman sandals!

Klaudia and I had been out shopping together in Liège before the trip to get summer clothes for Italy!
So we showed off our stuff.  Merci Primark

The hill nearest to the Colosseum

The back of the National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II

Inside the Roman Forum!  Caesar is buried in there!
Sylvie, Alex (Can), Kara (US)

The Roman Forum was by far my favorite part of our Rome visit.  And everything ancient like that was my favorite part of the whole trip.

On the way out of the Forum.

A private parking we passed by on the street.

National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II (in passing)

A bit of pizza at the Pantheon

Catherine and Vicki and I found a tiny supermarket and got yoghurt!

The interior of the Pantheon.  I admit, I started looking for the handholds from Assassin's Creed.

The columns outside of the Pantheon and it's tiny piazza.

La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (The fountain of the four rivers by Bernini)

From one piazza to another

The Solar Obelisk in the Piazza de Montecitorio

La fontana di Trevi

1 coin over the left shoulder for to come back to Rome, and a second for a wish.
Learned that about 3000 euros are thrown into the fountain daily.  It goes to charity.

Photo with the polizia at Trévi

We separated a little bit from the group at this point.

And we five found this piazza on top of a hill.  Caroline (Fr. Can), Me, Sylvie, Alex (Can).  Catherine took the picture.  We convinced her to take the picture of her oldies.

That's a men's toilets sign.

Catherine now in the shot

Caro and I danced all over the place.  Alex trolled.

Back in the town where our hotel was.  On the coast.

We got in the Mediterranean!  It wasn't TOO terribly cold either.  

Sunset in the sea

Everyone jumped in for the fun!

Nama ste Sravya in all her classy glory.

After supper, we went out to try to find stuff to do, and found some Italians who challenged us to a game of foosball!  Only a few of them spoke very little English, and we hadn't taken any Spanish speakers with us, so we just signed a lot.

They took us to a bar with wine with their girlfriends, and then we were home in time for curfew!  Just barely.
Here are all the girls that came with us, Connor, Alex and me were the guys, and then the 4 Italian guys that were  left at the end of the short night.  I know the guy on the far left is named Alessio, and then next to him is Angelo.

Roommates in the room.

Google Italia comes up automatically

And then we went to sleep.

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.