I’m here Rome! I arrived a little early this morning at 10:15. Unfortunately, it took me 30 minutes to get off of the plane and inside the terminal since we were unloading remotely and had to ride busses from the plane to the terminal. I flew by myself to Rome, so I was looking around to see what I should do next.
Out of pure luck, I saw my friend Claire from Arkansas who was also going to the Rome Center! She was traveling with a professor, so I followed them through customs and we parted ways at the baggage claim. Their entire group got their baggage while I was still waiting for our plane’s to begin coming out. I looked over to where the group that I would ride the bus with to the apartments was standing and they were gone. Then, one of the professors and my friend Claire walked up to me and said that they were going to wait with me until I got my luggage. After 5 more minutes of waiting, the carousel stopped and everyone had claimed their bags. I however, still did not have my bag and was beginning to get worried. Just as I was about to give up, the carousel started moving one last time to bring out the final bag, which just so happened to be mine. That was the best part of the day as I consider the worst part of traveling to be the part where you have to stand there and watch other people get their luggage as you wonder if yours made it.
I made it onto the bus and they took us to Trastevere where most of the apartments are. My apartment however is in a different location which just happens to be closer to the school than the rest of the apartments which is nice. This cuts my walk to school down from around 25 minutes to around 12. When the bus made it to my apartment, an Australian man who works at the Rome Center named Chris helped us with our bags and said he would stay until the lady came to let us into the apartment. She had said that it would take her an hour to finish showing others their apartments, so Chris said he would watch mine and my roommates’ luggage while we went to grab a bite to eat.
At first, we were looking for something quick, but we got lured into a pizza restaurant. I ordered the Margherita Pizza, my roommate Christine ordered the Carbonara pizza, and my other two roommates, Lauren and Anna, got bruschetta. While we were sitting there talking and waiting for our food, Chris emailed us that we needed to come back because the lady was done early. We told him that we were still waiting on food and he told us to send two people back to wait with the luggage. At that moment, Lauren and Anna’s bruschetta arrived and I asked our waiter if he could box our pizzas up to go. He begrudgingly obliged and brought our pizzas out a few minutes later. While we were still waiting for our pizzas, Lauren and Anna gave us their money and took their bruschetta to go.
Once our pizza arrived, Christine and I left to head back towards the apartment. When we arrived at the apartment, Chris was just leaving and the woman, Clara, was ushering Lauren and Anna onto the tiny elevator. The elevator was a typical Italian elevator in that you had to open two saloon style doors to get into the elevator and close them and a wrought iron gate outside of the elevator in order for it to work. They got off on the first floor (what we would call the second floor in America) and the elevator returned for Christine and I to pile onto it. We made our way up to the first floor where Clara was trying the key in the three different doors since she didn’t know which one was ours. After jiggling the key around in the last one, we heard someone yell from the inside in Italian. I can only guess that she was telling us to mind our own business. Clara called our boss who informed her that we were staying on the actual first floor which is called floor zero here. She let us into the apartment, explained a few things, gave us our keys, and was on her way. Pictured below are two pictures, one of my kitchen and one of my room (where you can see my roommate Christine taking a post-lunch nap).
After unpacking, I began to get ready for dinner. After we were all ready, we did what we were instructed to do and met Chris downstairs at 5 so that he could show us the way to dinner. Dinner was in the Trastevere area and we had to pick up some girls along the way so it turned out to be around a 35 minute walk. Dinner was provided by the university, and since there were 72 students eating at this restaurant, the university had to rent it out. The menu was already set and the waiters and waitresses kept bringing by dish after dish after dish. In all, I’d say we had about 7 courses, the typical Italian meal. The food was pretty good but I wasn’t too hungry having eaten the pizza earlier in the day.
After dinner, another woman from the Rome Center walked a group of us back to a middle point and instructed us on how to get back to our apartments. It wasn’t too bad to get back since our apartment is right across from a huge landmark: Castel Sant’Angelo. In the first picture below, the castle is pictured as viewed from our bus ride to the apartment. In the bottom right picture is a view of the castle from a bridge crossing the Tiber River. Unfortunately, we can’t see the castle from our apartment since all of our windows have a view of a sketchy back alley. The good thing about our apartment is that it is in one of the best apartment complexes in Rome. To get in at night, I have to use one key to get into the first gate. Once I’m through that, I have to use a different key to get into the building. Once I’m into the building, I have to use another key to get into my apartment which has four locks on the door. Needless to say, this place has a lot of safety measures in act. Additionally, most of the people who live here are extremely wealthy lawyers and doctors since the location is amazing and the rent is so high.
After we got back from dinner, we decided that we wanted to go to the Supermarket to get some food for breakfast. There are a couple of markets near us, but they all close at 8. By the time we had walked back from dinner, it was already 9, so we had to go somewhere that was open later. I got on google maps while still on the wifi and mapped us to a supermarket that was about half a mile away and over the river. I screenshotted the directions and we headed out in search for food. We made it to where we thought the supermarket was supposed to be, but no market was to be found. Just when we were about to give up, we looked across the street so see the market!
We all went in and bought food for the upcoming week. I bought pasta, pasta sauce, asparagus, and sour cream & onion pringles. We then returned home carrying our bags and put away what we bought. Now I’m laying in my new bed, in my new room writing this blog post as I am about to get to bed. We have an early day tomorrow, but I guess you’ll just have to read my next post to figure out what for.
Ciao!
Taylor
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Read more from Taylor at https://taylorsitalianavventura.wordpress.com/
Check out http://studyabroad.uark.edu/romecampus for more information on the U of A Rome Center: Summer Campus.
