Rome and Florence: A Trip for the Girls

December 6th (Tuesday) and 8th (Thursday) were Spanish national holidays. For those of you who don’t know, Spaniards are fans of taking long weekends. When a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, they’ll often take the Monday or Friday off too. Thus, I had a total of one class—on Wednesday—during the first week of December. To be fair, most Spaniards at the University did not have the week off, but the office for international programs canceled all classes for Americans. I took the opportunity to meet up with my mom in Italy!

Mom and I ended up spending 4 nights each in Rome and Florence. Here are the highlights:

1. Gelato. Let’s be honest, it doesn’t get any better than in Italy.

2. The Trevi Fountain. This was probably my favorite part of Rome. Our hotel was easily walking distance, and we spent time at the Trevi almost every night. We people watched, ate gelato, and enjoyed the fountain. Luckily it was warm enough to be outside even though it was nighttime in December.

3. The Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. This was literally an entire day. After much debate, we ended up getting the audio tour and trying to make it through the museum on our own. It was incredibly overwhelming but definitely worth it. We were there for hours, and we didn’t even see all of it! We also got to the Basilica too late to do anything but look around, but we were so tired that I don’t think we could have done more anyways.

4. The Colosseum and the Roman Forum. This excursion produced my favorite photo of Mom and me from the trip!

5. Midnight in Paris. One day, utterly lost, Mom and I happened upon a movie theatre that was playing Midnight in Paris in English! We hopped in line, bought tickets, and went in. It was utterly perfect, as we had wanted to see this movie in the States before I left but never made it happen.

6. The Duomo. Our hostel in Florence was within site of the Duomo. We finally made it to the top of the dome on our last full day there—yes, that’s 400-and-something stairs!

In front of the Duomo:

From the top of the Duomo:

7. The museum that houses Michelangelo’s “David.” While Mom was most excited to see David, the best part of this museum for me was the collection of musical instruments it houses. We just happened across it, but we ended up spending a bunch of time looking at the Medici family’s collection of instruments. There were also extensive and very informative interactive video stations—I learned a lot just from listening to the historical explanations. Unfortunately, the Stradivarius violin was not on display the day we visited, but all in all I really appreciated the exhibit.

8. Shopping in the open markets in Florence. What an overwhelming experience! It definitely did pay off, though.

9. The food. I have to say that a lot of my assumptions about Italian food were just plain wrong. Meatballs, for example, don’t seem to be the norm, nor did we find as many pastry shops as I expected. Nevertheless, it was good to get a nice big dose of pizza and pasta (and wine, of course)!

10. Christmas lights. It was like out of a movie! Christmas in Rome.

11. Being with my Momma. It was just good to have some girl time.

Spanish word of the day: vestidos de moda = fashion dresses (because one of the statue museums we went to randomly had contemporary fashion dresses displayed along statues from 100 B.C. We still haven’t figured that one out.)

un besito,
elizabeth