Rome Day 1

I took a three day weekend to go visit Rome to tour around and to drop off the majority of my luggage with my friend Rachel from MIT, so that I could do my three weeks of travel in August with only a backpack. My travel partner was Tara, who flew in from her internship in Barcelona. She had a camera that took pretty nice photographs so the shots with a wider angle on the lens or panoramic view are taken with hers. We also met up with two other MIT students working in Venice for the summer, Alexis and Shavy.

Right from the beginning, there were monuments all over the place! I took a bus ride back to Rachel's apartment since I got in around midnight and it was like a city tour you'd pay for. Her place was near Piazza Venezia, so it was one of the first paths we walked through. While are too many centers like this in Rome to keep track of, but it had a building/monument that honored Victor Emmanuel, he first king of a unified Italy. It was very imperial.

Not far from this was the Capitoline Wolf, a bronze statue based on the legend of the founding of Rome. I had never heard about the statue or the legend but I kept seeing postcards of this thing in stands around Italy, which made it look like a huge statue. The actual sculpture on top is two and a half feet long so we were all confused when we unexpected walked up on it.

Soon afterward was the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. 

I didn't  appreciate the Roman Forum or quite understand how it was supposed to have been the center of Roman civic life until I saw a picture of what it used to look like. There was a better one that superimposed the image that some Canadian tourist showed us.

 Tara's camera took some cool, panoramic pictures. You'll probably need to click on them to fully appreciate it.

 Along with the Forum, we visited the Palatine. While it just looked like a bunch of rocks after awhile, I enjoyed the various views along the walk for its scenery.

Afterwards, Tara and I split off for two hours before meeting back up with everyone for dinner.  We ran over to the Trevi Fountain. It was a little hard to get nice angle to take the picture from since a bunch of people were crowded around it. The fountain was a nice sight since I was hot from walking around Rome all day.

We passed by the Pantheon as well, but just missed the hours that it was open to go inside that day. 

We all ate at a bar we found in the Trastevere neighborhood. It was more of an American bar feel though. The Anaheim Angels game was playing on the mounted up across from my side of the table. It was a unexpected juxtaposition. I remembered how far away from home I was and how many flights, trains, and buses I've taken since I was last home in the beginning of January.

Along the Tevere river there was a bunch of tents set up selling food, drinks, random cooking utensils, posters, and all kinds of stuff. We were all tired and full so we didn't spend much time, but I liked the atmosphere. There was a good jazz combo playing at one of the bars set up but we were already on the way back to Rachel's apartment.