The next morning we woke up and Carol and Hannah set out for the Vatican (a trip that would turn out to be in vain, they got ripped off with their tour guide situation and the Vatican turned out to be closed… for a full account of this please refer to Hannah’s blog, http://hannahkitziger.blogspot.com) and I met Camille and Isabel at the Galleria Borghese. It was BEAUTIFUL! It was my favorite thing in Rome, if you don’t know what it is, it’s now a museum of all these paintings, architecture, and sculpture that the Borghese family had commissioned, it’s a 2 story palace and the whole building is a work of art. It features ton of work by Carvaggio, Bernini, and other Italian Renaissance artists. All of the rooms were painted and had sculpture everywhere. We spent the morning there and then headed to Piazza Navona to have lunch.
We settled at this place called Rust tucked away in an alley off the Piazza. I had Gnocchi in tomato sauce, Isabel had smoked salmon, and Camille had mushroom pizza. It was sooooooo good, all of our meals were AMAZING, and I think I had Caprese Salad at every meal in Italy, its safe to say I am now addicted. After lunch we got gelato and walked around the Piazza looking at the fountains and people watching. We ran into our Global Studies Professor, Alex Nalbach and his partner, my architecture teacher, Marc Vincent. We told them that we went to the Galleria Borghese earlier that morning and they were impressed that we made the reservations to get the tickets for it, we told them it wasn’t our 1st time in Rome. They told us since it wasn’t our 1st time, and we had probably hit most of the main tourist sights that we should go across the Tiber River to the Trastevere neighborhood, and spend some time there looking around. Then we parted ways and headed to the Pantheon, I hadn’t been there before and it was AWESOME. I learned about it in Architecture class and it was just breathtaking being inside, it is SO BIG. After that we went to the Trevi Fountain and sat for a while with the masses of people and then threw in coins, and took some pictures. I spotted some mariachis, complete in costume, sombrero, and with their instruments chilling across the fountain and took some pictures of them. After the Fontana di Trevi we went to the Il Gesu church because it has great fresco on the top, that shows the final judgment. It was built during the Baroque period during the Catholic counter-reformation. Camille and I learned about it in Art History, the people getting condemned to hell seriously look like they are going to fall on you, and the ones going up to Heaven look like they are glowing. You can’t tell where the fresco ends and sculpture begins, it was truly breathtaking! After the Il Gesu, we wanted to go to St Luigi de Francesca because it has 3 really pretty Caravaggio paintings, but when we got there we found out the Church was closed on Thursdays, bummer. Then I went back to the Hotel and met Caroline and Hannah who spent all day at the Vatican and were very tired, hot, and frustrated, so the 3 of us took a nap in our hotel for about 2 hours. Then we shopped around in the streets around our hotel, I found a cool swimsuit cover up, but that was my only purchase. Then we came back to the hotel and got ready for dinner, we wanted to have dinner at our hotel on the Terrace because we had gone up there earlier in the day and it was BEAUTIFUL and had great views, but there was a private party on the very top so we ate on the 2nd level, but it was fine. Adelaide, Lauren, Ashlea Feezel, and Maggie met us and we had a really fun time! I got Lobster Ravioli and it was amazing! After dinner our guy friends came and met us at the piano bar and we had drinks and just hung out listening to the piano man, who loved Hannah because she did a lovely duet of Crocodile Rock with him on mic and also played the bongo drums when she wasn’t gracing us with her beautiful voice. The piano man LOVED our group and we requested lots of Michael Jackson and danced and had a great time! Then we went back up to the rooftop terrace after the private party was over and had a drink. It was a nice night outside and I was soooo happy to be in Rome, life was good!
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