Day 11 - The Gates of Rome

Once we made it to our super nice, super comfy hotel we took a couple of hours to eat lunch and walk around. We met in the lobby to go to the gates of Rome. We read a book by Conn Iggulden called Emporer: The Gates of Rome. It is the first book in a series of books that tells the life story of Julius Caesar. Does anyone know what name Caesar went by for the first 15 years of his life? It was really awesome to see some of the book come to life when we got to the actual Gates of Rome. This is the place where all Roman Generals and their armies marched into the city to parade after winning a battle. I think this was a very fitting first stop in Rome, what do you think?

Can you believe that armies of men walked through these gates? We were all taking bets on how long that took. While we were there, we met up with Mrs. Ruth who was a Building Science teacher but is not running and AU Abroad program with the Department of Human Sciences in Arricia, Italy. It is always fun to see familiar faces when traveling the world! Here are a few pics from the square around the Gates of Rome:

Anoop cut us loose after the Gates of Rome. Most of us headed to another little square to meet up with the AU Abroad Arricia girls and we happen to stumble upon the Pantheon..

It is super hard to get a good exterior picture of this monster! More pics of the Pantheon to come in my next post!

We ended up at a bar called The Drunken Ship in a small piazza. It was really fun to take over the bar Auburn style while watching the champions match. Our group was about half and half Chelsea FC and FC Bayern. I definitely stated from the start that it would end in PK's and Chelsea would pull it off! It was a really awesome match and we did a big War Eagle before we left.

We caught a taxi home and called it an early night since we knew there would be a lot of walking involved the next day. I have felt a little under the weather the past couple of days so I am trying to take it easy with early nights and lots of sleep. Today we went to the Coliseum, Roman Forum, Constantine's Arch, Italian Parliament, and the Pantheon so stayed tuned for my next post! Ciao!