Ciao!

Today we had the freedom to do whatever we wanted in Rome and as a class we found many different ways to spend it.

Brynn and I started our day off by taking a journey to the south part of the city to go to a cat cafe for brunch called Romeow. Afterwards we then decided to continue and went shopping for a little bit before returning back to the hotel to work on our homework. We decided to finish our day off by going to this cute little Italian restaurant where we sat out side and talked for a while before getting ourselves some gelato for dessert.

A small group of the guys—Ben, Jacob, and Cullen—went and took a tour of the University of St. Thomas Bernardi campus that we have here in Rome, which is luckily just a short twelve minute walk away from where we are staying.

Another group of girls—Carly, Grace, and Aveline—went to the Piazza Navona area for the day. They started their day off shopping around, as seen in the picture below, before grabbing pasta for lunch. Afterwards they took the metro further east to go get some charms for their Italian charm bracelets, a keepsake a lot of the girls on the trip have gotten (myself included).

This morning a larger group of guys went to see Mussolini’s victory memorial in central Rome where they got pizza together. After this they then went to H&M to get a little bit of shopping done before splitting off into smaller groups. One of the students who split off to do his own thing is Jack, he ended up going to the Vatican to get a pendant for himself and some rosaries and crucifixes for his family. After this he continued to go around and do some more shopping by himself, as seen in the picture below.

Last but not least, some more of the girls took a trip to see an art exhibit about flowers, afterwards they too also decided to do some more shopping before we leave the city.

With how busy we’ve been in this last week, having this small day to rest and get to see things that we won’t be able to see as a class on our last day in Rome has been really nice. Overall it has been a great time in Rome and it’s been really great getting to know everyone better. It’s been amazing getting to go from a classroom setting to being able to connect the material directly to something later in the day.

Alla prossima!

-Hillary Festvog