Ooo The Glamour!

Wednesday April 5, 2006

We started today off at 9:30 like all the other days. Our first trip of the day was to see some catacombs! I was really excited for that. I mean that’s where Christianity was first practiced when it was nothing but a mere mystery cult in ancient Rome. Its an amazing part of history. Sadly though, the catacombs that we did go to were just a small section and not very fascinating. No paintings to represent how they taught the stories of Jesus or anything cool like that which I assume is somewhere else in Rome. No, but it was fairly cool. I mean we did get to walk around. Its so crazy- like an underground city. But why I was so disappointed was because we only spent like maybe 10 minutes down there and that’s it! : ( Oh well. Next we hopped back on the bus and headed to Tivoli. We first went to the Villa d’Este. This place was absolutely amazing! Like fairy tale amazing! It had these huge fountains all over the place and was gardens of like 3 major levels.

It was an incredible sight to behold. Of course once we got to the bottom level that meant we had to go back up! That was quite a little hike back up, but like I’ve said before- need something to burn off the ice cream! Hehhe…. Mmmm Ice Cream!!! Ok Ok really there is more to Rome other than ice cream… well… a little more. : ) But I didn’t have any just yet. Next stop was to the Villa Adriana- Hadrian’s Villa. It was a huge complex built by Hadrian himself. The buildings were obviously in ruins, but you could still tell how huge they were. These buildings were absolutely towering.

I am telling you- if you could see this place in its prime I bet it would be the most incredible glitzy place ever! Today was a little strange though because when we were at Hadrian’s Villa it started to get cold and even started raining! Man we were really getting spoiled with all this sun. I even have quite a little sunburn on my face now from the previous days. After the Villa our day we came back to our hotel, but before dinner we stopped into a shop and got some… what did we get? Ice cream of course! Today’s flavor- Hazelnut! YUM!!! With hazelnuts mixed in too remember! Could there be anything better? Hmmm well I think it needs more research. Hehehe. Then we came back to our rooms for a little rest before we headed to dinner at the cafeteria in the train station. We stayed there for quite a while until 8:30 because tonight we took a bus tour of Rome. So we could see it all lit up- very pretty. : ) We even had time to stop at the Vatican to take some pics and later stop for some more ice cream. Tonight’s flavors- caramel cream and some swirly chocolate flavor. Hey the flavors are in Italian! Its hard to translate! : P After our nightly ice cream fix the bus headed back to the hotel. Oh and your did ya know for today- Did ya know that they use a comma instead of a period in prices here? So if something is ten euros it looks like this- 10,00. Yeah, its quite strange! Well that’s all for today. Tomorrow we got a walking tour of churches. Should be very fun!