May 31- June 1, 2010 Rome, Italy

I believe I left off talking about my winery tour, but if I am wrong let me know and I will back up a few days. So starting very early on monday morning I got up to take a three hour bus ride to Rome with the class. The bus was very nice, but I slept most of the ride since I was up at 5am, which normally would be fine but with everything I have been doing was sooo not cool. When we checked into the very nice 3 star hotel in Rome the whole group gathered downstairs in the lobby to go on a short tour of Rome for the day. We ended up leaving for the first church of the day at around 10am I believe. The first main site I saw was St. Peter's and Vatican City which was amazing! It's so weird because it is fenced off since it is its own city-state, but its in the middle of Rome.


While in the area of the Vatican we stopped at the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine chapel and the Raphael rooms that were there. The picture below is in the Raphael rooms and is called 'School of Athens.'
There were a few other sites that we saw throughout the day but mostly we saw the Vatican. The last main site we saw was Trevi fountain which was cool but very crowded, I think the picture below was the best I could do at the time. :)

That night when I went to dinner I ended up going with the professors by myself because some of the other girls where going to go with me but they decided to chicken out and I was ok with going. The upside I have found of eating with the professors is they pay for the wine and water which is really nice. I had a very good dinner that was not very far at all from the hotel in Rome!

The next morning was our last day in Rome and we had a lot planned originally for it, so after a really yummy breakfast at the hotel we all headed out to our first site. We went to the Pantheon first and I got some really good pictures there! Two of those are below.


So then we went to a few sets of Roman ruins including the Forum which was the main political center of ancient Rome. I took some pictures but we didn't go down inside it because it cost money and we had other things to go see.
The last place we went to as a group was the Collasium(?) which was cool but once again I didn't go inside it because it cost money and was really crowded. The professors then decided to give us the rest of the day off until dinner at 6pm (it was noonish) so we could do what we wanted.
Me being the church nerd that I am went around the rest of the day with Dr. carter and two other students to a total of 15 churches. I ended up seeing the burial places of 6 apostles, the pillars from the scourging of Christ, the steps from Pontius Pilate's palace that Christ walked on, Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa (below), and many more fun things!
I will fill everyone in on the many churches when I get home there is too much to say now and I still have to do some readings for class tomorrow! Ciao!!