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Rachel's Eurotrip
I met shira at the rome airport on Saturday! It was great to see her, it had been so long! Then we had a nice little adventure getting to our "hotel." From the outside it looked like a normal apt building but then some lady opened the window upstairs and screamed out "Klein?" so yea we knew we were in the right place. It was just some couples apt that rented out their two spare bedrooms, and she made us breakfast in the morning! It was a beautiful apartment, in a great location.
We saw the Spanish steps and a few other monuments that first day and did a little shopping and then met up with my friend who was studying there. The next morning we went to the ancient city and saw all the roman stuff. I loved it! We went to the Palantine hill. Im not exactly sure what it is completely, but I think it was where all the aristocratic members of society lived, looking down on the city of rome. There were a ton of things to see, even though we didn't really know what everything was that we were looking at. For example, we walked through a big grassy area with a dirt track surrounding it to get there and didn't think twice about it, but then after reading in shiras book we realized we walked through circus maximus the place they held chariot races! (think Ben Hurr)
Then we walked through the roman forum. It probably would have helped to have a tour guide because again we didn't really know what we were looking at but it was cool because it was all so old yet built so strong. Then we went to the Colosseum, it was really big and again, old looking. For anybody that doesn't know, it is where they would have gladiator fights where men would fight wild animals until everyone was dead basically. We happened to be there at the end of some sort of cultural week so there were a ton of people and it was pretty crowded but we got entrance into it and the palantine hill for free!
Then we went to the Pantheon (not the Parthenon right shira?) which is just a dome shaped temple, but it was built 2000 years ago and architects still cant figure out how they built it without any technology. At the top is a small opening that is a sundial, so depending on the angle of the sun it hits in a different place and can tell the time, it was really cool.
The next day we rushed to the Vatican city because we had a train to catch. When we got there the line was unbelievable for the museum, so we went inside the city and were going to go to st peters, but that line was ridiculous too, so we just stood in the middle and took pictures. Then as we were leaving we saw that the museum line was way shorter so we ended up waiting there, it took about an hour and we got to see the museum and sistine chapel. I thought the ceiling would be cooler because everyone talks about it (it's the one by Michelangelo). And you couldn't even take any pictures of anything, even without flash and they had guards everywhere!
So, that was our Rome in 2 days. It was a cool city, very big and dirty though. Kind of like the NYC of Italy I would say, lots of similarities, they might even have worse drivers in Rome, they were so scary, especially since a lot of the streets didn't have lights at the crosswalks, you just kind of had to go. Then it was off to Florence!
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