Adam's Blog: Post 8- Last day in Rome

Blog 8,

June 18,

This trip to Rome has been an interesting one for me, for both good and bad. This whole trip in general has meant a lot to me in both the fun and learning aspect. I loved the fact that wee were at the sites when our professors lectured and that we had an almost paper free class, it was a good trip over all. It meant a lot to learn more about the Roman culture and more cultures that surrounded the Romans. It was a very good class.

What I learned on this trip was survival, in academics and daily life. I learned how to mage time, some what for getting stuff done and how to live like an Italian. Both were difficult for me at least. But I made it through three weeks worth. I think I will do a study abroad trip again. They were a lot of work, but they are fun and interesting. I have had both good experiences and bad ones, but that happens in everyday life, not different than being at home.

Today, I did not stay in Rome. I went to the awesome city of Florence. It was a beautiful city and I highly recommend going there, it is worth the train ride. Although, I realized that after today, that one could spend a ton of time there since there was so much todo. I went with 9 people from class. They all were a great group to spend the last day off on this trip. We all pushed really hard to get up early in the morning to go to this city. We all had to wake up around 5-5:30 to get to the train station to catch the train. We were early to both trains going there and back, we were very cautious about getting there, hence the main reason to getting up early. We really did not have an agenda planned, so we just winged it when we got there.

The first thing that we did was check off at least one thing of 2 places that everyone wanted to go to. That was to go to the museum that held the famous Michelangelo statue of David. I will admit that waiting in line was a little too long for it, but it was worth it just to see one statue. But, in the end it was, the detail on that statue was incredible. Then we walked around the museum and saw a bunch of old Christian items, I think there always fun to see. After that, we went to the famous Duomo Church in the city. It was really awesome in terms of architecture on the outside, the inside however was a little plain I will admit, but it was cool to see the inside as well as the basement of the church was cool. I did not get a chance to read the inscriptions there, but I got tons of pictures. After that we went to see the the bell tower of the Duomo. That thing was rough to climb to the top. After the first 130 steps or so I was feeling it. But thankfully there were platforms that you could stop and take a break. There was a total of 414 steps that we climbed. Some people thought that they were going to die while climbing up, but we had all 9 people when we got home here in Rome. After that we had a lunch and did some shopping. I walked around the city with 2 other guy's on the trip.

We walked around and found some leather stores and looked in them, and found one we liked and bought some items from it. I got a wallet for my mom and my dad that the guy claimed was made in Florence there. I hope they were at least. I got a aqua color for mom and a black for my dad. Then we made our way to a sport store and the other guys I was with got some stuff, while I was there looking around and did not find anything that I wanted. Then we stopped at another leather store and I got a belt costumed made for me, it was cool at least I thought so. Then we walked and found a gelato place, it was not the greatest, but it was something to eat. Then we went to the river that ran through the city, and saw the gold market there. Really expensive stuff I will say. After that I wanted to go to the Dome to climb up it and get some pictures.

I wanted to climb the Dome at the Duomo, but the line would have taken an hour plus the walk up, so I decided to pass, next time I'm here, that will be the first thing that I will do. After that I walked around for a while and was going to try to find the famous synagogue in the city, one of my classmates told me to go and see it. But I could not find it int eh amount of time that I was given before meeting up with the group. So I got my walking in for the day. I went instead to the leather shop that I bought a wallet for my mom from to exchange it for a different one, the one I did get I though she may not like it. It was a little big I thought. So I got a different one for her.

After meeting up with the group we had an awesome dinner and then we left for Rome. Although, when we got here all the Metro subway lines were closed, so we had to take a bus or taxi. When in doubt take a taxi, because bus's can be misread. We got on a bus and started heading the wrong way, but we did figure it out and got on the right bus finally. Then we got back to our apartments.