Roma, Italia

Just a few summers ago my whole family, along with my aunts family, took a summer vacation to the beautiful city of Rome. In this particular trip, we enjoyed Italy for about a week before we took off on a Mediterranean cruise with stops in Greece, Crete, and Turkey in just one week. Just to preface, I don’t recommend cruises if you’re looking to really observe and appreciate the culture of another place. You only get stops of a day or two at each place. On the other hand, it’s so much fun so still do it if you can.

So we spent one week in Italy, and one week on the ship. Honestly, Italy was the better half of the trip. We stayed in a little Italian condo type place called the Hotel Sole dal Pantheon. I hope you’ve all heard of the pantheon, a beautifully built temple dedicated to the Roman Gods. Well we could see it from our balcony. The Pantheon was just across the square from our hotel. The square is filled with little cafes and shops. Italians just love to sit around, drink espresso, and people watch. It was kind of fun to live a different culture for a week. And all around us we were surrounded by little back roads and allies, each containing their own little treasures. We walked by butcher shops, pastry shops, bakeries, pizzerias, etc… It felt like exactly what I had always imagined it would be like. And not too far from the Pantheon was the Trevi Fountain. Although somewhat crowded from so many tourists such as ourselves, we could feel the magic in the air. So we took some coins, made a wish, and threw them over our shoulders into the water, hopefully to return someday back to the fountain. So we walked around, ate some fresh gelato, and enjoyed the smell of roasted chestnuts being roasted and sold on the streets.

Of course we did all of the basic tourist things, including seeing the Vatican and the Coliseum. My younger cousin, being slightly less educated than the rest of us, was almost convinced we weren’t allowed in the Vatican because we were Jewish. So his dad, trying to mess with the poor kid, told him there was a 75% chance we would be arrested. Either that or we would burst into flames when we walked in. We legitimately had to calm the kid down before he would come in with us. Later that week we visited the Coliseum and I was amazed by its sheer size and architecture. The idea of such a large stadium, with an underground fighting arena, and hundreds of levels of seating, all made of stone, blew me away. And then eventually we left for our cruise. But that’s a whole other story. Like I said before, the cruise was a great time, but all it did was leave me with a desire to go back to those places and spend more time there. It was all a tease, but still an amazing cruise.