Smiles

Sunday, June 22nd

Today we left our small town life in Arezzo behind and moved to the beautiful city of Rome! After we checked into our hotel we had a walking tour which included the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and the “Wedding Cake”. Unfortunate for us, ninety percent of Rome is under construction making many of the sites not as appealing as they usually would be, but it was still awesome finally seeing these famous photo ops. Even though you couldn’t even get close to the Trevi Fountain and it was dry we still threw coins in and took lots of pictures. The Spanish Steps themselves weren’t under construction but everything around them was so we spent some time there going up and down (yay exercise). One really interesting thing at the steps were all the merchants selling illegal stuff. We were warned that we could get in trouble from buying them, and we’ve been told countless stories about why they’re there and how we shouldn’t feel bad for them, but I still hate being mean to them (also I bought some fake sunglasses hehe).

After we went to the steps we went to this building which I don’t know the name of but people were calling it the “Wedding Cake” which makes sense cause it was a big white building with a bunch of different tiers. We went to the very top of the building and it was without a doubt the most beautiful view I’ve seen this trip. It was a 360 degree panoramic view of all of Rome and there was a refreshing breeze. I really could have stayed up there all day, but our time ended and we made the trek back to the to hotel for dinner. On the way back, I was walking towards the back of the group with Annie and as we were talking we both noticed a girl trying to take Annie’s wallet out of her purse! We looked at her and she just looked up at us with a huge smile on her face. Of course Annie snatched her purse away from her but we didn’t really yell or anything because we were in so much shock. It was just kind of sad how the little girl reacted, as if it was some game and she was proud of how far she got. We were just like, “Did that really just happen?” and didn’t know how to react. Her smile was so snide, but there had to be pain and sadness hiding behind it. The prettiest smiles hide the deepest secrets. Later we told Kirk and he turned into Super Kirk and started asking about what she looked like and went searching for her. Another guy in our group stalked a pick pocket and caught her red handed but the cops didn’t really even do anything about it. It just shows how out of hand the pick pocketing and illegal selling is in Rome and how little can be done to control it.

For our first night in Rome we decided to go to a last minute Rolling Stones concert we just found out about. It was also our first attempt at using the metro system which was an interesting experience. We ended up getting lost and had to ask some sketchy locals where to go, but it was still a lot of fun and we technically saw the Rolling Stones in concert. Rome is so much nicer at night (if you’re in a group, otherwise it’s really scary), because there’s a lot less people and landmarks like the Colosseum are so pretty at night.