"i hid my egg in the vatican museum"

I am back from Italy!! First off, I could not believe that the flight over took less than 2 hours. I lived 2 hours away from Rome! A friend was saying earlier this week, about how coming to Europe from the US is a Big Deal. But traveling around Europe when you're already in Europe, is like driving to another state!

I do not even know where to begin. We arrived in Rome on Thursday, and took a night walk courtesy of Rick Steve. If you don't know, Rick Steve writes travel guides that are packed full of interesting information and helpful tours, but seriously lacking in practical information (For student travelers such as myself, I have found the Let's Go travel guides to be amazingly helpful). We saw the Piazza Venezia, the Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and Campo d'Fiori. We had dinner in the Campo d'Fiori (spaghetti carbonara - yum), and some delicious red wine (I don't normally like red wine, too). Piazza Navona was by far, my favorite spot in Rome. In the middle is the Four Rivers Fountain, which has the personification of the four major rivers at that time: the Nile, the Danube, the Ganges, and the Rio de la Plata. In the middle of the fountain is a large obelisk. The fountain was actually under restoration, so it was boarded up, and had small viewing windows so you could see the sculptures. But even with that, I found it to be breathtaking. It was so huge and so imposing; you could almost feel the force and the power of the personified rivers, as if they were actual gods.


Friday, we spent the day in Vatican City. We went to St. Peter's Square, St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museum. We climbed up to the cupola, and the dome of the basilica. The view from the cupola was amazing. Then we toured the Vatican Museum. Highlights include: the statues of Apollo of Belvedere, Laocoon, and the Belvedere torso; and the paintings in the Rafael Rooms, specifically the School of Athens (my favorite in this museum). The Sistine Chapel was smaller than I imagined, but the ceiling was so high, I could only imagine how it looked to Michaelangelo while he sat on a scaffolding painting it.


Saturday was Ancient Rome. We hit the Colosseum first, then the Roman Forum, and ended at the Pantheon. It was raining the entire time, and it took two days for my sneakers to dry. Sunday morning was Easter, and we boarded a train to Venice in the early morning. In the spirit of Easter, we decided to have our own Italian Easter Hunt... we "hid" an egg in all the places we visited, and tried to guess where each person hid it.


Venice was stunning. Everywhere you looked there were canals and waterways, not a single car in sight. We bought a three day ferry pass so we could hop on wherever we wanted. The hostel we stayed at was on the island of Giudecca, which was south of the main island of Venice and only two ferry stops away. We explored St. Mark's Square, went to the Correr Museum, the Basilica, and the Palace of the Doges. Venice was a much more relaxing time than Rome. In Rome we were constantly rushing to make sure we did everything we wanted to, and we were exhausted every night. In Venice, however, we had time to stop at a cafe for coffee, go window shopping, people watch, and walk into almost every souvenir shop we came across.

While I enjoyed Italy very much, I was happy to head back to Greece. I actually missed it a little bit. I always miss home, but I have just started to settle into living in Greece, and the language, and the neighborhood. I could not stop speaking Greek in Italy, and when I got back to Greece, I could not stop speaking Italian.