Another Week in Beautiful Rome

This is my second week in Rome and I am getting super excited to head to Amalfi and Atrani this weekend. We have had a great week and it all began with visiting the Mediterranean Sea and going to the Pentecost, which was the most beautiful thing I have seen. I was right at the front of the gate, so the rose petals were literally falling right above me; it was incredible!

The rest of the week involved venturing all over Rome, sketching and going on different walking tours with Scott and Tom. On Monday, we were rained out of sketching, but before the rain started, we drew paraline sketches, which I had never done before when just going out to sketch. It really opened my eyes to the space and how it functioned; it was definitely a super enjoyable day for sketching until the rain came. With Scott, we headed in different basilicas, which were super interesting, as he described the different frescos and how they were composed from different Biblical stories. In San Clemente, we were able to see the current church and then headed downstairs where two more churches were buried below. The churches below were filled in long ago when the structure began to fail and then they built on top using the previous as foundation. It was incredible that a man came up with the idea that there were churches below and started digging, where he indeed found these structures, in which we were able to go below and see these very finely preserved buildings. With Tom, we headed to the Palatine Hill and the Forum, which was incredible seeing an area that was once a lively town, but then, was used as a cow pasture until it was uncovered later. It completely amazes me not knowing what we are walking on; is there possibly a full city below the current Rome? So many questions and seeing all the ruins that have been excavated it really makes me start to think about it. We also went to the Coliseum, which was amazing! Once again, pictures do no justice to the great size of this theater. The structure is hard to believe and the mass of all these ruins amaze me, especially with the idea of how they were capable of creating these structures so long ago; even with our technology today it would be extremely difficult to construct these incredible ancient structures and most likely not possible. This week was another great one and I am super excited to venture away this weekend to enjoy an area of few tourists or crowds.