The rest of our Rome Weekend

Friday was yet another busy day. We began with a quick look into the Church of Sant’Maria della Vittoria. A few of the people in our group said it is one of the churches from the book ‘Angels and Demons.’ It also houses one of Bernini’s famous sculptures… Ecstasy of St Theresa. Afterwards we headed for Termini (the main metro station) to take the train to the Coliseum. It was interesting to see the different brick and stone patterns throughout the structure and how our design patterns have not changed much. We used our Roma passes for the train and then to get into the Coliseum and then we headed to the Roman Forum. Our professors had books that showed before pictures of what the town looked like, it was interesting to compare what was left for us to see today, what has survived and what has fallen to the ground. We went to the Capitoline museum next. The art students took some time to sketch some of the statuary. We ended our busy day with a walk through the city to the Four Rivers fountain (another sculpture by Bernini) and the Pantheon. Oh and did I mention we stopped for some gelato along the way…I am working my way through trying every flavor!

Friday night we had more leisurely night, walked around, did a little shopping and ate at a Trattoria (nicer than a pizzeria, but not as expensive as a restaurant) which was on the interesting side… we have decided a place a little off the main road with cheaper prices is not the way to go… Lesson learned! Food was not awful but we had definitely had better during our trip.

Saturday we had an appointment to go to the Borghese Museum. They have a strict policy entering and leaving the museum according to the times on your ticket but they give you plenty of time. Again the art students had time to sketch some of the statuary within the museum and outside the museum in the gardens. I was very surprised by this museum, I did not know exactly what I was going to see and felt I had already seen every masterpiece Rome had to offer. We saw several pieces by Bernini (yes… he was very talented and has artwork ALL over Rome) and more paintings by Caravaggio.

From the Borghese we walked through park surrounding the museum in search of a train station to head towards the Vatican and St Peters Basilica. Several students in our group had paid extra to go to the top of the Dome of St Peters and we were headed back to do the same thing. After stopping for a delicious lunch at a pizzeria we found a very, very long line and decided we did not want to use our day standing in line. Another student had gone to the Castle Sant’Angelo the day before and said the view from the top was beautiful! We decided to give it a try. We made the right decision because the view from Castle Sant’Angelo included St Peters Basilica and a panoramic view of Rome. It began to rain when we were leaving the Castle so we decided to jump on a bus and head home to meet up with the rest of the group for dinner. Well our bus ride turned out to be a bit longer than intended because we ended up at a bus stop where the drivers changed shifts, delaying our ride a bit but keeping us dry!

We spent our last night hanging out as one big group for dinner and then splitting ways for the rest of the evening. Our group met up with Lorenzo (a guy who was our server in Montepulciano for the first two weeks of our stay) and a few of his friends and he took us to the old part of Rome, where nightlife was much more laid back and inexpensive. Lorenzo explained that trains were not a good option at night and that buses did not run nearly as frequently so we walked home – a 40 minute walk, but we broke it up into several small trips. We walked across the river, back past the Four Rivers fountain, the Pantheon, and to the Spanish Steps. I enjoyed taking some night photos of the city!!!

Sunday we had a few hours before catching a bus back to Montepulciano. Kristin and I did some last minute walking around the city to make sure we did not miss anything, while souvenir shopping at the same time. We grabbed a sandwich and some gelato for the bus ride home!

Our first day in Rome!!!

We took a bus from Montepulciano to Rome on Thursday September 10th. We left early in the morning so most of us slept on the bus, trying to save up all our energy for our busy weekend ahead of us. We checked into our hotels at about 12 and had about an hour to wait while the hotels checked our passports and then we were on our way again. Our first stop was Termini- the main Metro (train/subway) station in the city. The two main lines, red and blue meet here and this is where trains to other cities leave from as well. Our professor and director of the program purchased our Roma Passes while we all grabbed a bite to eat. There are lots of McDonalds throughout Italy and a large group of our students headed there for lunch. Kristin (my roommate) and I headed to a small sandwich place with a short line to make sure we had enough time to grab some gelato!!!

From Termini we headed to the Vatican (by Metro). The trains were not too crowded, which is something we were heavily warned about. We stayed in a group, I wore my money belt and we kept are purses-which only had my camera, phone, map and water- in front of us. The walk into the Vatican was a breeze, the program had pre-ordered our tickets so we did not have to wait in any lines!!! We spent the majority of our day in the Vatican Museum, St Peters Basilica and the Piazza San Pietro. The Vatican Museum is filled with masterpiece after mastpiece... If I only had one museum to choose from on a visit to Rome, I would choose the Vatican Museum. If you purchase tickets ahead of time it gets you into the museum and then you also do not have to wait in line for St Peters.

Just a few of the things we saw...
Raphael’s “Transfiguration”
and “School of Athens”
Leonardo da Vinci’s “Saint Jerome”
Caravaggio’s “Entombment”
Laocoon and his Sons
a Torso sculpture which inspired Micheangelos David
Mummy of a Woman
Micheangelo’s Sistine Chapel
and “Pieta”

Thursday Night: A group of us went out to dinner at a Pizzeria near our hotels. We all thought we were ordering individual slices of pizza and ended up with medium size pizza’s instead!!! After our long day and lots of walking we all just about finished each of our meals. After dinner we headed out for some mroe sightseeing. We headed to the Travi Fountain. A lot of the streets in Rome are small and narrow and do not follow a grid pattern, so one minute there is nothing on the street you are walking and the next minute you are standing in front of another masterpiece surrounded sightseers. On our way to the Spanish steps we got a little turned around with our directions, we came across a bar that offered us Americans drink specials and that is where are night ended. We visited the Spanish steps on Satuday and Sunday instead.

Our Apartment - Pics

I tried to upload a video but it says it is going to take hours and hours... maybe there is a way to down the file size...

Florence and Cinque Terre

I hope you all have been enjoying the new additions.
Pictures and Map showing where my apartment is located!!!

Last weekend:

Friday we had a planned day trip to Florence to go to the Uffizi and the Academia. The rest of the weekend was free! My roommates and I and a few other decided we wanted to stay the night in Florence and then head to Cinque terre for Saturday and Sunday morning and be back for classes on Monday.

Early Friday morning we got up to head down to the bus, packed a few sandwiches for the ride and in between museums and we were off. Traveling by bus so far has been pretty uneventful. Traffic seems to be non existent. We probably stopped for maybe two red lights on the two and half hour ride!! We had a guided tour at the Uffizi, we saw paintings by… Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio to name a few. I had seen many of the paintings in my art history books before, but to be standing right there in front be of them and see the detail and brushstrokes first hand was really something. After the Uffizi we had some spare time to meander through the city, grab a bite to eat and head to the Acadamia. On our walk we saw Brunelleschi’s duomo, and Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise. The Acadamia is a very small museum and the main attraction is Michelangelo's Statue of David!!! Again to standing there right in front of it was just unreal.

After the rest of the group headed back home (Montepulciano) on the bus, we checked into out hostel, made a quick stop at the flea market, picked up a few souvenies, and went to dinner. We ate a place our hostel recommended. A buffet all you could eat dinner and a cocktail of your choosing for 8 euro. It was delicious!!!

Saturday morning we decided we wanted a head start on getting to Cinque Terre so we boarded the 6am train and we were on our way!!! Here is where our trip got interesting… or as our professor would call it ‘An Italian Moment.’ We checked train schedules before we left and had hostel information as well. When we arrived at the train station just outside Cinque Terre we were informed that there would be no train to take us home on Sunday. Soooo we enjoyed the few hours we had, which were totally worth every second of our long journey. The views are amazing and I have added Cinque Terre to my list of place I most definitely want to visit again!!! The train ride was not so bad because we still were able to see the country side and the cities along the way. We passed Carrara, city where white marble is found, The David came from there and Pisa- you can see part of the leaning tower of Pisa from the train.

We ended our trip with a taxi ride from the Chiusi train station to Montepulciano. It sure was an experience and I was holding on for dear life!

All is all it was a busy weekend, but we checked off quite a few ‘things to see in my lifetime’ and were glad to be back home in Montepulciano!!!!


This weekend we head to Rome and hopefully our adventures will be a little less hectic this time around!

Picture Slideshow...

Map - My Home for 10 weeks.

6 via di collazzi montepulciano, italy


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I am trying to stay on top of my blog as best as I can. I think it is a great way to stay in touch with all of you and for me to look back on at the end of my trip and recall all the great memories I have made.

Classes Started on Monday September 1st. We are all taking Italian Mon-Thurs for the first 5 weeks we are here. I am really enjoying it because I cannot wait to ‘really’ speak with the locals. Right now I am still getting by on my English-Spanish-Italian, pointing and hand signals. Even though we cannot speak the language yet, when I here someone speaking English it takes us a minute to realize, hey we can understand that!! They play a lot of English music here…older songs mixed in with a few new, mostly dance music…90’s!!! It is as if they are about 5-10 years behind on the music… we listened to some N*sync and Backstreet boys in the café the other night.

Tuesday we went to wine tasting before dinner and it happened to be the birthday of one of the guys on our trip. We sat in the wine cellar for our wine tasting of a family owned winery. Crociani. The gave us bread with our wine and we learned that traditional Tuscan bread does not contain salt because of a strike during medieval times when taxes went up. They continue to bake their bread without salt but dip it in olive oil and salt…not pepper and balsamic vinaigrette as much. We also had some meats and cheese with the wine… my new favorite cheese is Pecorino (sheep cheese). Ok more about the wines… we had a white and two reds… Bianco “Unpodiba,” Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2006 and a Reserve Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2005. Then we tried Grappa di vinacce di Nobile (made from the skins of the grapes so the alcohol content is very high). After we went to dinner and then went out that night to the Garden Bar at the bottom of our town with our entire group and two of our professors. They have pool tables, foosball, air hockey and ping pong. It was FUN!!!

Wednesday was a long day for some people as Tuesday was a late night! It was just a day of classes and an early night to bed. We did have our first Art history class and our professor is Italian, from Florence. He is very knowledgeable but mixes Italian and English so we had a bit of a hard time following him at first…

We finished our classes for the week on Thursday and went to the farmers market that comes to our town on Thursday mornings only. We bought some tomatoes to add to our sandwiches we were making to take with us on the bus to Florence. The tomatoes are DELICOUS!!! They are so red and juicy and flavorful!!!!

I will save our Florence and Cinque Terre trip for another post---coming soon!
I don’t want to upload to much at one time and overload the internet over here!