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| Our hotel. |
This morning, after a long flight from the US, we arrived in Rome. A shuttle took us from the airport to our hotel, the Villa Santa Maria in the Monteverde neighborhood.
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| View from the hotel window. |
I was super-tired from the flight and the jet lag, but apparently it's best to fight jet lag by staying awake as long as possible and trying to force your body to adjust to local time. So after everyone got settled in their rooms, we took a walking tour of the neighborhood.
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| Local pizzeria. |
We saw where some of the local restaurants, pizzerias, gelaterias, and convenience stores were and we also walked to a huge park not far from the hotel. Lisa and Aaron also gave us handy maps of the city to help us get around and they talked about how to use the bus and metro system, something we'll be doing a lot of.
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| Near the study abroad center. |
After we got lunch from a pizzeria, we took a bus from Monteverde across the Tiber to central Rome and visited the study abroad center run by the company helping to organize the program. We met with their staff and got a crash course on adjusting to a couple of weeks of life in Rome.
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| Villa Doria Pamphili, a large park near the hotel. |
After that, we headed back to the hotel and a lot of us took a nap, although some of us walked around the neighborhood and the nearby park, the Villa Doria Pamphili. We all met back in the lobby around 6 pm for a discussion about the program expectations and a little preview of our activities tomorrow (a trip out of Rome to the Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia). For dinner, we had a group dinner at a delicious restaurant next door to the hotel, Il Focolare. The antipasti bar was fantastic and so was the table wine!
Now, it's time for bed. Hopefully I can get over this jet lag soon!
