The final frontier.
Sienna
Before we made our journey to the eternal city, we did make a one-day stop in Sienna. Even though we visited it, I felt there wasn’t enough information or photos to go with it for these website purposes. Here is what we did get in the short time allotment if you’re interested. I got some amazing gelato that was vanilla flavored as well.
A Laundromat is a “Great place to meet people,” I said.
Throughout the trip, it was mostly my dad and Ronan that went out and took care of the laundry, and oftentimes I stayed at the hotel either doing homework, or watching people play Deltarune chapter 2, since that was out at the time. But this time, I went out to the laundromat with them and we met this German fellow who talked to us about living here and the whole college situation in Sienna. We found out it was insanely cheap to attend university here in Italy compared to the prices in America. It really made me stop and think about my future, maybe I could live and go to school somewhere in Spain as I speak spanish. An additional perk of an IB education? Our laundry experience went very well, and we carried the now clean clothes with us back towards our hotel.
Arrival in Rome
It’s the final train ride for us in Europe and this one was pretty short. Once we made it to Rome we got on a rather large double decker bus and stopped near our hotel. The driver was going pretty fast for a bus ride, probably around 58kph. A long walk after, and we made it to our last spot to stay for the trip, and what a spot it was, I mean this place was one of the only places I saw that was, in fact, better than the pictures showed it to be. The beds were aplenty this time around and I didn’t have to worry about sharing with anyone. Also it was close to the Vatican.
Clothes In Rome
I must note we did have a massive shopping spree for some clothes in Rome since we’d been holding back on increasing the room in our suitcase. But now we were in the final place we would visit, so we felt it was okay to buy a fair bit of clothes. I bought a turtle neck and a button-down at Muji. I realize I am gravitating towards discovering my own personal style at this time in my life from this experience in Rome and in Europe in general. It’s also kind of what made me wear turtlenecks during this winter season back home. It feels like I am finding the real me.
Roman Catacombs and Domus Aurea
We decided to check out some of the Roman catacombs near the Coliseum. It seems like I have been studying Ancient Rome my whole life. It was so cool to think that every step in this city had probably at least a quarter mile of archeology under us from Ancient times that had yet to be excavated. They are always digging up stuff in Italy. I enjoyed learning about the underground church here in the catacombs when the Catholics had to worship underground during the Reformation. I also really thought about the movie, Gladiator when I was walking around this arena and the grandiose games and events that must have been played here. We learned that the real Circus Maximus wasn’t far from here, but had since been covered over by a large park. There were miles upon miles of catacombs. We had only scratched the surface on our tour. And there were so many cats. Was it the never-ending supply of rats?
Spanish Steps with a Side of Queen
I made it to the top!
