Rome in a day

Ciao!

On Thursday I took a train to Pisa for just a couple hours on my way to Florence (Firenze). I thought about asking a random stranger to take my picture in the pose looking like I was pushing the tower over, but it just seemed far too cheesy sine there were thousands of others doing the same thing all around me, so I just sat in the lawn around the leaning tower and equally amazing churches next to it watching the crowds. later Thursday I met John at the Firenze train station and we camped at an amazing campsite on a hill overlooking the whole city, arriving just at sunset (I have about a hundred photos of the sunset reflecting on the river with all of its bridges and the light on all of the church domes and tile roofs). We spent Friday exploring the streets and Piazzas of Florence, sampling much pizza and gelato, then took a train to Roma. The campsite in Roma was not quite as well located and we had an adventure of trains and buses and walking along busy roads with no sidewalks to get there, but it worked out fine as budget accommodation anyway. Saturday we walked all over the city to all of the major sights including the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon (which I was particularly impressed with), and the Colloseum (which we caught at sunset for some great photo taking). The vatican city sights were closed Saturday afternoon through Sunday, so we didn´t really go inside anywhere, but otherwise covered all the major attractions in a day. Sunday we took a trip to Tivoli just outside of Rome to see Villa d'Este which I´ve studied in landscape architecture history courses. Actually my whole trip in Italy has been giving me flashbacks to lectures studying this piazza or that villa, so many of the sights I´ve been going to I will recognize and start remembering design facts about which is neat (my professors would be so proud). Villa d'Este is known for its amazing fountains which were engineering feats in their day and equally impressive now with sprays spewing and trickling out of all kinds of sculptural compositions. My favorite was the row of a hundred animal face fountains. We took a train back to Bologna last night and I will probably have some less ambitious days to rest up for my last week in the UK today and tomorrow. I´ll be back in the US late on the 24th so I´m looking forward to catching up with everyone then!

Ciao!

Nicole