Lifes An Adventure: Italy

6/16 Rome

I apologise once again for not having daily updates for over a week. I have not had a computer to work off of. But anyways I will try and bring you all update as best as possible.
When I departed the Uk, my group was headed to Belgium. We spent 2 days in Brussels, 2 days in Gent, and a day in Brugge. For the most part this part of the trip was not very organized like most of us expected it to be. We got to tour a few EU buildings, got lectures at each building, and had the Chief Economist from NATO come talk to us over dinner. Besides that, several Belgium Beers were sampled as well as various chocolates. I'm sure I did several other things but my memories a bit foggy at the moment, its all a big blur. From Belgium, me and several others headed to Amsterdam for a couple nights. The highlights of Amsterdam was the Anne Frank House, Van Gogh Museum, and the Heineken Brewery. The atmosphere of the city is um very unique and was quite an experience just to walk through.

Then 4 days ago I had a really really long day which ended in Rome where I ended up running into some people who looked related but weren't as good looking as me. In the past few days we have been all over Rome and have done a ton of walking, some of us are in better shape than the others. The first night we just walked to the Repubblica and around some of the surrounding area to get our bearings. We ended the night with some delicious Gelato.
On our first full day in Rome, we did a hop on hop off bus tour. It took us around to several sites around the city but was not very informative. It played music with the occasional dialogue about some ancient building. After the tour, we decided to do some exploring on our own. We headed to the Trevi Fountain and cooled down by the fountain. From their, we made our way to the Pantheon. This was an incredible building. On the way back to the hotel we stopped in one of the hundreds of churches located around Rome. It was called the Santa Maria Degil Angeli. It looked very plain on the outside, but was breath taking on the inside. Many of the churches here are like this. I can't wait to go inside St. Peters.

The next day started with a tour that took us around the Colosseum, the Palatino Hill, and Circo Massimo. Our guide was very informative on both ancient Rome and his country men in general. The weather has been pretty hot out, so most of the time we are dehydrated and getting sun burnt, but its part of the experience. We came back to the hotel for a short nap and then headed out to an area called Trastevere. This area was recommended to us by both Roy and our guide. We enjoyed a very good meal and decided to head back to the hotel to call it a night.

Yesterday we went on the Official Angels and Demons tour. We followed the Path of Illumination to the four alters of science; Santa Maria del Popolo, St. Peters, Santa Maria Della Victoria, and St. Agnes in Agony. The tour ended at the Castle of Saint Angelo. It was a very interesting tour that made me want to reread the book. After the tour we did some shopping around, cuz apparently some people like to go on vacation to shop. I don't get it. We came back to the hotel for a 2 hour rest and then headed to the meeting point of our second tour. This was a night tour of Rome that covered the topic of dark Rome. It hit the highlights of the famous executions and killings that took place in Medieval Rome. The tour ended around 11:30, just in time for us to find a late dinner. Overall we spent about 12 hours on our feet today, which meant some people were very tired and sore.