Enchanted May: Roman Holiday Part II

I wanted to subtitle this post: How Rome Can Be Built in A Day (or Night), but it seemed excessive.

This past weekend was, in a word, packed. But wonderfully so. Thursday afternoon we packed panini for the train to Rome and left after class (I’ve learned that the singular is a panino; I’ve been asking for multiple sandwiches all my life. And worse, I haven’t been getting them.) We arrived at our hotel/apartments, which were nice and not far from the Termini station. All thirteen of us travelled together, but we split up to do different things during the weekend. Thursday night we decided to do a night walk of Rome, organized by Matt, aka “Mr. King,” aka the only guy on our trip, who wanted to do his project on it. We ended up hitting a ton of sights in the city, influenced by whatever people were most interested in. Having just been there, I was ready with a map. I’ve discovered how much I like navigating and knowing where I’m going, so that was partly my role on the trip. (Matteo gets huge credit for organizing it all.)

Hey, weren't we just here a week ago?

Arch of Constantine

It was great to see things in the evening/at night when there were no tourists (and only a few hawkers) left. We walked all over the city, stopping for a late dinner and heading back early in the morning. The Coliseum, the Forums (beautiful at sunset), the Arch of Constantine, the Arch of Titus, Palatine Hill, Trajan’s Column, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Spanish Steps…all in one night. It was pretty great.

Pantheon

Piazza della Rotunda

Piazza Navona

I loved the Trevi at one in the morning – there were still people, but most were sitting around talking and relaxing, and some had brought drinks. It seemed like a great idea that I might borrow for the last night I’m here. The Spanish Steps were empty, in contrast to when we saw them in the afternoon last week (was it only last week?).