After years of teaching about the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and artists and sculptors from the Renaissance. How could I in good conscience continue to teach the children without ever going there? And so, with only my students' best interests at heart, I took one for the team and took a little trip.
I met up with some friends in Rome where we navigated ourselves from our delightful apartment to our tourist destinations latching onto anyone who spoke English, dramatically gesturing with our hands, and cheering whenever we made it to our destination. However, we got better and soon were running around Rome like, well, tourists. But I think we did pretty well, and I soon learned to say excuse me in the correct form to close friends and acquaintances. Amazing, I know. You should hear my good morning and thank you.
Our little group outside the Colosseum
The Highlights:
The buildings, ruins, sculptures and paintings
Most of my time spent in Rome was taking pictures saying, "Wait till the kids see this one. Did you see that painting? The kids are going to love this one. Oh my goodness, this will go perfect when we talk about the gladiators." Yeah, pretty much I loved every minute of what we saw and learned about in Rome. If you are fascinated by it as well, let me know. I have 8 different pictures of just mosaic tiles. My class won't know what hit them when I come back with my slide show O'Roma.
Just outside of St. Peter's square you can stand in two countries at once. Vatican City and Italy. However, this isn't the spot. Although, we took this picture because we thought it was at first. However, I like this picture better than the real one, because it has a great shot of St. Peter's square, and I loved St. Peter's.
The Colosseum was amazing and mind boggling. The architecture is amazing, and the thought of 70,000 people watching people and animals fight to the death-mind boggling.
Food:
For some reason, pretty healthy people see no harm in eating gelato once or twice a day while in Rome. It's that good.
Eating yummy pizza outside the Pantheon was fabulous. And although it may appear that I am consuming two huge pizzas, the other is not mine. I had to draw the line somewhere. I mean how am I going to eat two things of gelato a day, if I eat two pizzas?
Fountains:
I was at a football game yesterday and noticed that I was a tad grouchy and unlike myself. Why, you may ask? I didn't have any water. I couldn't bring any into the game, and I was too cheap to buy any water at the game. Which brings me to another reason I loved Rome. FOUNTAINS!!!! Everywhere you turn in Rome there are the most beautiful fountains, and some that are not the most beautiful, but all provide you with fresh, delightful water. I never had to worry about not having water, because everywhere we turned there was another fountain to refill our water bottles. Heaven!
A free refill of heaven
The Trevi fountain-Beautiful! (3,000 euros are thrown into the Trevi fountain a day, and they use that money to help stock a supermarket for the needy. I like that.)
Getting ready to throw my coin-Rome I'm coming back.
Night:
There is something magical about night in a beautiful city, and even with the graffiti, I thought Rome was beautiful. All around us people leisurely strolled along the strikingly lit buildings and fountains. We sat on the Spanish Steps savoring our gelato, visiting, and taking in the city. Our last night I stared out on the beautiful city through our apartment's panoramic windows and just sighed. Magical.
At the Victor Emmanuel Monument-designed for the first king of a united Italy.
Next stop: Sicily (I thought I would wrap everything into one post, but there is just too much. Then I thought I would at least write about all of them at once, but I am just too fidgety tonight, and so the saga will continue.)
2 comments:
I didn't know that about the money in the fountain. Can't wait for the next set of pics!
Love it Tiff! You look great! What an awesome trip (part 1)!
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