when in Rome...

(well you didn’t expect me to be here & not use that for the title, did you?)

 

On Wednesday I headed out in the dubious-looking weather to explore more of Rome.  I wandered around the rather large Vittorio Emanuele II monument - lots of marble & statues - and past various ruins and old-looking things, and over to the Pantheon.

 

It's really quite amazing how old the Pantheon is, how well-preserved it is, and how impressively large & solid it looks.  It's quite pretty inside, and I should know, because just as I arrived there was a sudden downpour, so I ended up staying for quite some time.  Of course it was raining inside the Pantheon as well, since there's a big hole in the middle of it, but there was shelter and relative warmth around the sides.

 

 

I eventually tried to soldier on with my sightseeing through the rain, trying to find the National Modern Art Gallery, but it was somewhere just off the edge of my map & by the time I was in the right vicinity my feet were squelchingly wet & suddenly nothing seemed to matter except changing my footwear.

 

So I spent the afternoon drying out in the hostel, and was then quite surprised to run into a guy who was at the same hostel as me in Salzburg (and we shared part of a train ride together towards Croatia).  It's surprising how often these random things happen. 

 

On Thurdsday, said guy (Jon), another guy & myself headed out to the Colosseum - yet another impressively large building.

  I first saw it coming back from Char's place on Monday: sitting on the bus, staring off into space, and suddenly WHOA!  That's the Colosseum.  It actually looked quite a lot smaller on the inside, but it was so interesting to see such an old building still relatively intact. 

 

Then it was wandering through the Roman Forum & up on Palantine Hill - so many ruins it's hard to know where to look.  And then it was time to once again dry out in the hostel, as the early-morning blue skies did not last.  In the evening I partied Rome-style (or American-students-in-Rome-style) with Char, some of her flat-mates and Paul (another camp friend who'd just flown in for a visit!). 

 

Friday I once again braved the rain to see the Trevi Fountain (now that's a serious fountain) & snap pics of various piazzas and streets and buildings.  I caught up with Char & Paul again in the afternoon and we just continued wandering around, soaking up the history of Rome, and having fun hanging out.