The First Night is the Loneliest

The first day I arrived in Rome my other two roommates were not here yet. At an orientation meeting for our building I made friends with a girl and we made plans to meet up later and go explore a little bit.

The part of Rome that we live in is called Trastevere, or Old Rome. It’s located in southwest Rome below the Vatican and left of the Tiber River. It’s characterized by cobble stone roads and narrow streets.

When we met up we had no working phones, no idea where we were or where we were going. All we had was a hard to read map provided to us by the school. As it turns out…I discovered that I actually love walking around with no destination. At home I’m always glued to google maps on my iPhone. All that was about to change.

Heres are a few pictures I took on my first night of exploration around Trastevere…

These are all photographs of restaurants. Almost every restaurant in Trastevere (or Rome for that matter) has an outdoor seating area, sometimes fully equipped with awnings due to the common occurrence of rain. They’re all lovely and adorable and for the most part their menu items are pretty similar. They’re all absolutely delicious and if you search around, most are relatively affordable. (Not to say that I’ve tried every single restaurant, pshh I wish, but from what I’ve experienced so far these are my observations).

At the time, we thought this is just a random fountain and church that we stumbled upon after getting some gelato (of course the first thing I bought in Italy was gelato). Earlier in the semester, I couldn’t really tell you anything about it other than that its somewhere in Trastevere. Now after living here longer I know that the Basilica is called Santa Maria and it is located in Piazza Santa Maria. It was made in the 4th century AD. It’s one of the oldest churches in the city and possibly the first to openly celebrate mass. You can still attend mass here, in fact my roommate went this morning for Palm Sunday.
This is one of many bridges crossing the Tiber River. The water is definitely cleaner than the Hudson River but I’m still not sure I would swim in it. Apparently, the news showed a bunch of Italians who were jumping off a bridge into the river one summer.
More restaurants. I can tell you that this one is located close to the river because its named after the bridge Ponte Sisto, one that we frequently cross to get to Campo di Fiori…which is basically an entire plaza of just bars.

Since my roommates weren’t here yet and I was still in shock that I left my entire world behind me and was in a completely new place….I put on Friends (my favorite bedtime show) and fell asleep.

What an exhausting first day, and I was only just getting started…

 

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