After a somewhat uncomfortable 18 hour travel day, the young, great looking, and extremely intelligent engineers of the University of St. Thomas have finally landed in Rome! Though some of us have caught a mild bug, which I will deem the ‘traveler’s plague,’ we seem to be making it, and enjoying every second that we’ve already spent here.

 

The events that really followed up after landing in this beautiful city have consisted of: not understanding really what anyone is saying, being unable to extract euros out of ATMs due to banks not realizing that we’re traveling, and being somewhat off-put by a slightly too smug customs officer. But none-the-less, once we made it to our hotel, we actually have already had some fun!

 

Now I can’t really figure out how to properly put in the pictures of what I’ve taken whilst being here, but I’ll link the instagram account that I will be uploading most of the photos to. The pictures uploaded right now is that super clichè airplane photo above the ocean that’s supposed to represent some sort of deep introspection, while the other is a view from a room that we are staying in that shows part of vatican city from the window (how cool!).

 

That night of our arrival was spent wandering around the city and seeing different landmarks along the way. We waited until the evening to wander around because our professors told us it might look a lot more special (spoiler: it did). A lot of us would agree that our final destination, St. Peter’s Square, was our favorite out of all the places we went to see. The best way to describe the places we’ve saw is that we’re all kind of living in a literal dream: it seems to be that these buildings are way too beautiful to exist in real life.

 

Anyway, our trip today consists of visiting the colosseum, so hopefully I’ll be able to take some pictures that truly give the landmark its justice! But until then, ciao!

 

-Alex Manning