so today started out so awfully but now it has been completely redeemed. so first of all, i was running really late for my academic advising so i get to campus at like 1043 when my appointment is at 1040 and am just like hey i think i have an appointment with francesco and the guys like oh francesco is in corso trieste (10 minute walk) so im like DAMNIT ok thanks and run over to find that he hasnt come in yet so im like ok this doesnt make sense. so i call up 2 others that i thought had an appt with him too and they were like oh yeah we came in and asked for francesco and they were just like oh we'll help you. so basically i havent gotten to register for class yet and freakin pier paolo only sent ME to corso trieste. awesome.

so then i went to the ies center after class to talk to someone and ended up running into collin. they said they couldnt help me today but to come back tomorrow so collin came over to try my staten style pasta with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella and then we sat outside and chilled on the park bench in the divider area of the street. unfortunately i have no photos documenting this but collin refused to let me take photos of us as native italians.

after that, she left cause she has to go to the police station at like 5 am tomorrow and then lisa came over cause we wanted to (at some point) head downtown and do some walking. she stayed for a lil while and then gretchen and jessie decided to join us for our evening stroll. we hop on a bus that we though would take us to the colosseum but then ended up right at the trevi fountain. i cant even believe how gorgeous it is at night.


here's a picture of the three roommates of corso trieste, 142 at the trevi fountain.


and then the two lisas enjoying the ambiance of the trevi fountain at night.


look how beautiful the trevi fountain is all lit up at night. it gave me kind of a chill to be there, especially knowing that its only a few minutes away from where i'll be living for the next 4 months.


so the legend is that if you throw a coin into the trevi fountain it pretty much guarantees that you'll return to rome. well the corny non tourists that we are, we decided to all throw in our coins but of course document the moment with a photograph. Here we are, after much pushing, right in front of the fountain getting ready to guarantee our return.


though the rim of the fountain is ridiculously wet, jessie had the pocket tissues that lisa and i bought from the grocery store in like a 100 pack. we were able to clean just enough of the rim so we could have a beautiful picture of us sitting on the fountain, enjoying the beauty of ancient rome.

so we decide to keep walking around the historic center (centro storico) to see what we can come across. so after buying DELICIOUS gelato, we're walking down a random pedestrian street and see one of those people in costume. it's a guy standing perfectly still dressed as a mummy. and so jessie is like WHAT IS THAT?! and i was like umm a person. and she honestly didn't know that it was a person so we decided to support his cause and donate some change and so here's the picture of us utterly confused. actually this is the second picture we took. the first time, the flash didnt go off so i was like HOLD ON but then realized this dude wasn't going anywhere so here's the second picture we took.


we continued wandering around and saw what looked like some beautiful monument and realized what it was. so the tomb of the unknown soldier is like this enormous monument that is made of white marble that can be seen from anywhere in rome. it's so huge and high up and well preserved that you can see it glaring from pretty much anywhere. it's probably one of the most beautiful monuments made and so expensive and so white but its still the eyesore of rome.

here's ths first picture i attempted to take of this "birthday cake" or "typewriter" as the romans call it. of course with all the passing traffic it got this odd lighting effect.


Here's a better and clearer picture of the eyesore of rome. so so beautiful, especially when all lit up at night.


so we started trying to figure out where to go from there and whipped out this lil mini map we had. it wasnt very useful so we unfolded the HUGE map. all we needed were our HOT IES rome hats to mark us as the ultimate tourists.


when Jessie and I couldn't figure it out, Lisa had this brilliant idea to lay it out against the wall and just figure out how to get to the colosseum. after the three of them sprinting across the street and me walking calmly (like the true new yorker) we finally saw where we needed to go. so we crossed much closer to the wedding cake and got some really pretty pictures. again, I can't post all my pictures here so here's the link to my fotki page if you wanna see every single picture ive taken. i've taken a ridiculous amount since ive been here so it's a pretty big page. http://public.fotki.com/lillestcruzzin/


anyway, here's the picture of the wedding cake upclose. its just so beautiful.


so the roman forum isn't really lit up at night much but we tried so hard to admire it while we were there. here's the best picture i got of the forum at night. amazing.





so while walking down the main street leading to the colosseum, there are 4 carvings of europe showing 4 different stages of the expansion of the roman empire. these are the best pictures i could get of them at night but none the less, still pretty cool.


This is one of the like 324938 pictures i took of the colosseum as we were walking down the via dei fiori imperali. i honestly can't even believe how beautiful it is at night.


I tried so hard to perfectly place the people in the picture. i found a bunch of surfaces i could use to rest my camera on just so i could take a picture that was not so blurry. if you notice jessie and gretchen were like running back and forth as i told them to move forward or backward.


Finally a picture of the 4 of us! right across the street from the colosseum there was like this crazy old marble water fountain that was perfectly situated to use as a surface to take nice pictures of the colosseum. of course at night its hard to get both the background and the subjects to not be blurry but in any case, this is the best we could do.

so apparently the italians are quiet on their buses. the 4 of us were laughing it up and having a good time and every1 else was either silent or giving us dirty looks. The first picture I took was of Gretchen and Lisa. Really cute.


Now, i asked Lisa to take a picture of me and jessie. she takes the picture and then reviews it and is just like hm well, before you see it, jessie, i just wanna warn you that as i was taking the picture i was thinking i should tell her to move her head but then i thought...nah.


so thats a recap of my wonderous night. it was the first time i hung out with jessie like not on a tour and not in the apartment. we had a really nice night and it was just a lovely evening stroll through ancient rome. :-D