Siamo Anduti a Roma con CAPA

This past weekend we took our group trip to Roma. Unfortunately, our tour didn't really take us to any sites I hadn't seen 3 or so weeks before with my parents. They did provide us with a tour guide to tell us more information about all the sites though. Her name was Rita and she was a hilarious tour guide. She took us to the Colloseum and the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon the first day. Some of my friends from high school are studying in Rome for the semester so a few of us met up with them for dinner that night. Jeff took us to Rome's best pizza place. The crowds and the pizza definitely proved that the pizzeria lived up to its name. I got a pizza with mozzerlla cheese and all kinds of vegetables. It was probably the best pizza I've had in Italy! Jeff also took us to his favorite gelateria. That was also some of the best gelato I've had in Italy. The gelateria made up all of its own unique flavors and everything was so creamy and delicious. I got carmel gelato with little chocolate cookies. They also dipped our gelato in chocolate like they do with soft-serve ice cream in the States. It was great!
The next day we had to get up at 7am to go on our tour of the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica. We didn't get to see nearly as much of the Vatican Museums as I would have liked to, but we did get to go down into the catacombs and see the tombs of old popes. That was interesting because I hadn't seen it before. Down in the catacombs we also got to see ruins from the original St. Peter's Basilica built in the 4th century. Since we were with a tour guide we also got to walk through Vatican City a bit and enter into the Basilica from a special enterance. She took us through the Vatican and explained some interesting facts and tid-bits. It was interesting, but not as impressive as it was seeing it for the first time.
That night our director, Lorenzo, made reservations for us to eat an authentic Roman style dinner. We had so much food and wine we could barely move after we were done eating.
We had also made reservations for that night at an ice bar. This was a vodka bar made entirely out of ice. It was so cool. They dressed us up in these space age parkas and gloves and sent us through this air-tight door into this room made entirely out of ice. The air was so cold, but it was such a next experience we didn't even notice. They had little igloo like rooms carved out of the walls for us to sit in and they served us drinks in glasses made entirely of ice. It was so cool, but we couldn't stay for too long because it was -5 degrees in the bar.
On Sunday we were so exhusted we decided to sleep in late. Once we got up we went to St. Peter's Basilica to see the Pope address the crowd as he does every Sunday. It was a cool event to see, but I was shocked at how empty the square was. I was expecting to see so many more people there than we saw. Soon after that we had to head back to meet up with the rest of the group and head back to Florence.
Tomorrow I am off to London to spend the weekend with my roommate, Jordan, who is studying there for the semester. It was so nice to see faces from home last weekend in Rome, I can't wait to see another this weekend!!