Rome- Day 1

We first arrived in Rome around 9:30 am Italian time. I flew by myself, but I met up with four other girls in my same program (Sarah, Hannah, Becca and Danielle) at baggage claim. Once we left the airport, we bought a train ticket to take the train into Rome. I actually met a woman on the train who was from Raleigh, NC, who had graduated from the textiles program at UNCG, and she knew a lot of my teachers at State! Once we got to the Rome Termini (the main train station in Rome), we began our search for our hotel. It took us about an hour to find our hotel, when it was only a few blocks away. We were soooo tired, hungry and about to pass out once we got to the hotel. After checking in and hanging out for a little bit at the hotel, we made our way through Rome to do some site seeing. First, wanted to buy a Roma Pass (a pass that lets us have free transportation and free admission into 2 sites), in order to save some money. We thought this would be an easy thing to do, but apparently everyone around here thinks everything is so close, when in reality it is A LOTTT further than they initially explain when asking for directions. We ended up having to go back to the train station, which seemed a lot closer this time around, and we bought the Roma passes there. Then, we took the metro to the Colloseo stop, and as soon as we got there and got out of the metro station, the Colosseum was literally right in front of us. Here are a few pictures that I took while we were there. 

After the Coliseum, we went to the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill. 

After seeing these sites, we got back on the metro and headed back to the hotel. We were going to stop at The National Museum on the way, but once we got half way there, we decided we were too tired and headed to the hotel instead. We napped for a while at the hotel and took showers, and then we went to the restaurant next door to the hotel, Mama Angela's. Hannah and I ordered cheese and spinach ravioli, Becca and Sarah ordered lasagna and Danielle ordered pasta with tomato sauce. It was definitely delicious! After dinner we walked across the street to the Yellow Bar and got our complimentary welcome cocktail and then called it a night!