Sono ritornato a Roma

Ciao tutti!

As you can see from the title of this blog, I have returned back to Rome from a month break in the United States. Although I enjoyed spending time with old family and old friends, by the time the temperature dropped to close to -15 degrees Celsius, I was ready to return.

Upon returning to Rome, I found myself feeling many conflicted feelings about my return. On the one hand, I was returning to a world that I had once known: familiar teachers, co-workers, even many full-year students with whom I had been waiting to become reunited with. On the other hand, there were close to 200 new faces that I found myself in contact with, which, in-and-of itself, was more than 100 greater people than last semester’s population. So while my experience back to Rome was a return home, it was also the start of a new adventure.

This past week I had taken part in orientation, and although many events were the same, such as visiting the Colosseum, as well as exploring this vast city with a new group of friends, unlike last semester, we went into the mountains yesterday for a day excursion into Lazio. While on this excursion, we visited two mountain towns: the town of Bagnaia, which was close to Viterbo, as well as the town of Capararola. In the first town, we visited a large villa and some gardens. The villa had been in the town for centuries, even surviving the hardships of the Second World War.

After seeing the villa in Bagnaia, we had a community lunch in a mountain top park. For lunch, we had pasta cacio e pepe, roasted chicken with potatoes, as well as a liquor-saturated sponge cake. The pasta was very flavorful, albeit a bit al dente for my taste. The chicken and potatoes, on the other hand, were cooked perfectly. The chicken was moist, flavorful, and tasted of rosemary, while the potatoes were seasoned perfectly. In my opinion, the cake was the best part of the meal; it was a chocolate cake with a sponge-cake top that was saturated with a dolce liquor.

Once lunch was completed, we ventured to the town of Capararola, where we saw an old manor that at one point had been converted into a fort. This particular site had been around for centuries, and contained many different pieces of exquisite art work. Upon completion of visiting the site, we returned to Rome.

Well that is all I have for now. Over the next few weeks I will update you with my findings and observations as I continue to travel throughout Rome, Italy, Europe, and beyond!

Ciao per ‘ora,

-I