University of Arkansas Office of Study Abroad: Roaming the City on Festa Della Repubblica: Day 9 #HogsAbroad in Rome

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Happy Festa Della Repubblica everyone! If you’re wondering what that is, so am I, but my understanding is that it’s basically like Italy’s 4th of July and I didn’t have class today because of it! So woo, hurray for holidays and sleeping in a little bit longer! Once I did finally get up I had the apartment to myself because my roommates started their morning VERY early at 5 am and headed to the train station to take a little day trip. So having the apartment to myself I just kind of ate breakfast, played music, caught up on some social media like us millennials do and then took a shower.

Once I was finished with that I got together with one of my fellow “Roamin’ Redbirds” to plan on what we should do for the day. Though it took us about 2 and a half hours to get out of my apartment due to distractions, we finally headed out and walked toward Villa Borghese (Rome’s Central Park). We really had no specific plan in mind for the day, but we did know that everything was closed for the most part due to the holiday. We wandered the park for a little while, sat and people watched and then continued on wandering.

We came across the zoo and figured it would be something fun to fill the time, so we went for it. My personal favorite part of the zoo was in the children’s zoo area where there were about 50 guinea pigs. It was absolutely precious. If you think guinea pigs are small, wait until you see baby guinea pigs. TOO cute. I’m almost positive a squealed a little.

Once we left the zoo, we walked back through the park and happened upon a GORGEOUS view of the city. We admired that for a little while, but then we had to find a metro station to get back to our apartment because we had wandered too far to walk back to our apartment building. On the way to the metro station, we heard someone performing music on the street and as we got closer, we had realized the song was “Sweet Home Chicago”, which was just a wonderful little thing to us. We threw some money in his guitar case and continued onto the train.

On the way back we realized how hungry we truly were and stopped for some very cheap, but very good pizza. Finally after our little afternoon into evening adventure had come to a close, we went our separate ways and I came back to my apartment to collapse on my couch. I got to FaceTime with Mary Kate and Callie and it was absolutely wonderful and made me incredibly happy. My roommates haven’t gotten back from their day trip yet and it’s 11:45 at night, so I’m hoping they’ll get back soon since we have class we have to wake up for in the morning, but we’ll see. Fun little side note, this weekend I will be going to Venice with the two guys who go to ISU and I’m incredibly excited about it. I’ll write again soon; until then–arrivederci!