european adventure: italy...roma

april 30:

on this day we flew to roma!!!  the most adorable child sat in front of me on the plane.  call me a stalker, but i wanted to steal him except his parents were right there.  was it possible to change your carry on item from a suitcase to a child??  once we landed, we got the group together, headed to the bus.

^^this may or may not have been the first picture i took in italy^^

then it was off to the convent to check in!

^^this is the whole gang.. just listening to the nun tell all the rules and such.^^

guys, i was so excited to stay at a convent.  i have this secret thing for nuns.  they are so awesome.  nuns rock!  literally, they rock.  i mean, there was jesus and mary and crosses on every. single. wall.  but still, they are all so cute.  they are all only about four feet tall and have the cutest smiles.  the halls were long and echoed because of the tiled floor.  fun fact:  our room was 320.  pretty cool actually, pretty cool.  this was the nicest places that we stayed in so far on the trip.  there were tall, tall ceilings.  gorgeous wallpaper.  a bathroom, and a shower.  so that was great.  there were four beds, we had a table and a great view.  

^^i know, dorky selfie in the mirror... but you have no idea how happy we were for a clean bathroom.^^

^^a little blury.. but the beds and the cross... i'm tellin you, it was everywhere.^^

^^see, our wallpaper was so pretty^^

^^the view from our window.^^

^^my cute little bed.^^

^^stacy just checkin out the view.^^

we walked to the capitol museum.  um... pretty sure that is my favorite museum in all the land.  on our way to the museum we passed the colosseum.  

um that building is amazing!  i may be a little obsessed... it could be due to my obsession with russell crowe and gladiator.  there were also some funny boys shouting at us in italian... too bad for our language barrier.. or too bad that they were faking it..

we passed the most gorgeous government or some sort of awesome building ever. you see, the teachers tell you what it is while you are passing it... but by the time its out of sight you totally forget what it is.. regardless of any of that, its beautiful.

anyway, the capitol museum was the best thing i think that ever happened to rome.  

but i love that type of art anyway.  like marcus aurelius and all of things during that time period.  the roman were/are so amazing.  the original bronze statue of marcus aurelius is in this museum.  fun fact:  the only reason that it wasn't burned down was because christians thought that it was constantine, the first christian emperor of rome, which basically does not even count because he was practically baptized on his death bed.

^^i love marcus... what a gem.^^

also the she wolf is also in the museum.  

 commodus:  he was marcus's son... except marcus was the end of the five good emperors of rome.  commodus was kind of a crazy pants.

 annnd the dying gaul. i love him.

but lets be honest, having marcus tower of me was the best.  i never expected him to be so huge.  after the museum we went to eat.  it was the loooongest walk of my life.  remember me complaining about how exhausting i was walking in paris.  well by this point it had just kept getting worse, and worse.  needless to say, my feet were killing.  i think it was like a five hundred mile walk.  just kidding, one of our teachers, brother flora, said that we walk about fifteen ish miles a day.  however, to stop complaining... it really is not that bad, because everywhere you walk there is gorgeous ancient ruins all over the place.. like this:

^^no big deal, we're just walking on original roman stone streets. ^^

the place we went to was pizza and pasta.  

welcome to italia, morg.  our waiter was such a little cutie.  mainly i think i loved his gorgeous olive skin.  i think i'm moving back next summer.  if i move back then i can find me an italian man and get married.  this idea serves many purposes.  first, we'll have to come back to italy all the time to visit his family.  free excuse to vacation more often.  and our children may have a fighting chance of not being albino, because i am quite white and such.  i mean, i had been in italy for less then twelve hours and i was in love.  i mean, i loved the air, the art, the architecture, the people, and the pasta.  and i thought that london had stolen my heart... but i think that rome stole my soul.   so the pizza here is so tasty.  the crust is nice and thin and they use fresh ingredients.  like not processed cheese and such.  fresh picked tomatoes.  after dinner we went back to the convent to hang out with the nuns.  we found these guys in several places.  we found them on the way to the museum, and on our way back from dinner.

^^fake?? i think not.  major talent over here!!^^

curfew here is not even a joke.  in paris if we were late that was no big deal.  staying in a convent was a little different.  the nuns have a set curfew, 10 pm or tough luck for the night.  but it was okay having to come back early for the night... because the nuns are so freaking awesome.  really though, the nuns are probably the cutest things i have ever seen.  and they are so funny.  which you wouldn't expect.  

may 1:

so today is mayday.  that is a great big, europe or roman or both, holiday.  which is good and bad.  there ended up being a big celebration that we stumbled upon in the park, but that also meant some things were closed... the nuns made us breakfast.  the nuns are adorable.  anyway breakfast in europe mainly consists of bread and nutella and hot chocolate.  i'm not going to complain there.  on our way to some churches we passed the collumn of trajan.  sooo awesome.

^^embrace all the pictures.. i love them.^^

after the column we found this building again... walking everywhere isn't so bad when there is gorgeous buildings everywhere.

this morning as a group we went to some of italy's four most famous churches.  the cathedral thing is not getting old.  love them.  like the santa maria sopra minerva... that has michelangelo's christ

right outside that church is the pantheon.. so we took pictures with that. naturally...

^^right outside of the church... and bam. there is the pantheon.^^

^^they're everywehre..^^

^^oh yeah, and we had gelato.^^

we went to the san pietro in vincoli... that has michelangelo's moses.

^^michelangelo's moses^^

and two others that i don't remember. but here's a picture just for fun.

i'm sure they were great.  the pantheon was closed today. dang roman holidays.  we hung out in a plaza as a group then we separated...

the four of us decided to go to the trevi fountain.  i made a wish.  now i can cross that one off my bucket list.

we had pizza and gelato right next to the trevi fountain.  yummmm..

^^stacy and i^^

we went to some markets and basically the four of us were exploring the wonderful world of rome.  we headed up to the borghese park.  that's where we headed upon the celebration in the park. that was a lot of fun.  we more just wandered around in there.  the park was huuuge.  lots of trees and walkways and such.  we got lost in the park a couple of times.. we saw the missionaries there three times.  crazy, right?  the borghese museum was also closed because of mayday.. sad.

^^that's the museum..^^

^^i don't know why i find this so humerus.  she is wearing shorts and a tank..
but her purse makes her look otherwise...^^

we decided to find some food and the colosseum.  except we got a little lost.  good thing for holly and taylor.  stacy and i and maps are not friends.  they are so confusing!

^^this was the view stacy and i generally had.^^

^^see what i mean getting lost isn't that bad... ^^

so thanks to hollster and t-swizzle we made our way back.. the colosseum was closed... i only cried a little bit.  i wanted to go soooooooo bad.  but the arch of constantine is right next to the colosseum.  so at least we got to see those.

after we were so hungry.  i got a cal zone.  yum.  then we got some gelato.  we had gelato right next to the colosseum.  no big deal.

why does america not have the food thing down yet?  food in europe is fabulous.  it started raining a tad bit so we headed back to our convent to chill with the nuns.