Posted by Caroline Powers on Tuesday, May 30, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

For our free weekend, Michelle and I decided to travel to Rome. Michelle had visited once with her family, but I had never been so I was excited to see all the touristy Rome monuments. We took the train from the airport to Termini Station, then walked to our hostel from there. Neither of us had stayed in a hostel before, so we had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be an amazing experience, as the hostel had a bar and a fun rooftop where many of the people staying there hung out, so we got to meet so many different people from a lot of different places. After dropping off our stuff at the hostel, we decided to start exploring the city and got to see a lot of monuments, like the Colosseum, Piazza Venezia, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon. The first thing I noticed when we were walking around was the large number of tourists. I thought I was pretty accustomed to tourists, as there are a lot of tour groups that walk around Cefalù, but in Rome it seemed like almost everyone I saw was a tourist. Also, in Cefalù the tour groups seem to be mostly Europeans, so it was strange to see so many Americans and hear English being spoken all around us. Our weekend in Rome was much more fast paced than life in Cefalù, which was fun but very exhausting. But on our last day in Rome, Michelle and I crossed the Tiber river and explored the Trastavere neighborhood, which seemed like a completely different city. The streets were much quieter and much less crowded, and the people we saw walking along the streets seemed more like locals than tourists. Now that I’ve done a lot of the touristy stuff in Rome, I would love to return sometime and be able to see parts of the city further away from tourist areas and experience more of Rome’s unique culture.

Michelle and I in front of the Trevi Fountain: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-UlF0RWxlbjliWUE

Tourists all around the Spanish Steps: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-QXRZOEl5NWFaS1k