Days 1 & 2 – Travel Day & Athens

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By Caroline Rice & Kylie Sturgill
Day One: Friday- Travel Day

 

CMH→ATL→FOC

 

We all arrived at the Columbus airport on Friday at 11:15 AM. We met under the big arrivals and departures sign and we were all very excited for the trip to begin.
We made it through security…everyone’s bags were under 50 pounds. We had some time to kill before our flight departed at 2:24 PM so we spent the time getting to know each other and hanging out at the terminal and grabbing food. The flight to Atlanta was a quick one hour and five minutes.
Upon arrival at ATL, we all dispersed in the different food courts in the terminals to eat before the nine hour flight.

 

Everyone was super anxious to board the plane. It was really starting to set in that we would be waking up in Rome, Italy the next morning. When we got on the plane, it was packed and we all filed in to our seats to get situated and look for movies. A few hours into the flight, we were given a menu to choose our meal for dinner. We each watched two movies and ate dinner before attempting to fall asleep. The dinners were full course meals, and were surprisingly very good. We tried to get a lot of sleep on this flight because Rome is six hours ahead of Columbus, and we were arriving in Rome at 11:00 AM, which was 4:00 AM Columbus time. Although we didn’t get a lot of sleep, our adrenaline was running high and everyone was excited
to wake up in Rome. We were given breakfast on the plane shortly before landing.

 

Day Two: Saturday- Bike Tours of Rome and Lunch

 

Upon arrrival, we exited the plane to go through customs and pick up our luggage and then meet our tour guide Sjoerd.

 

He guided us out of the airport and onto the train that would be taking us 30 minutes to our hotel.
We were able to check out our hotel and hotel rooms before quickly meeting up to head to the City Center for Lunch and the Bike Tour.
We took the Bus to the City Center and ate lunch with Sjoerd at Trattoria Pizzeria. They even had gluten free pasta for Caroline!
From there we walked to pick up our bikes to begin the tour. We split up into two groups, each with their own tour guide.

 

Throughout the tour, we made stops at The Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Imperial Forum, Piazza Di Spagna, Campo Marzio, Piazza Navona, The Pantheon, and The Holy Center.

The biking was a lot of fun, but it was quite the experience. We were riding on the bumpy cobblestone roads and it was really hard weaving through all of the crowds on the thin streets. We saw lots of vendors trying to sell selfies sticks and phone charges to all of the tourists. But riding the bikes gave us such a cool experience, being able to see eveyrthing in such a short amout of time and really feeling the wind blow as we flew around the historic city.

Both groups met back up to drop off their bikes and we were planning on taking the bus back but there was a demonstration that was occurring that shut down a lot of the busses, so we made the three mile hike back to the hotel.

After arrriving at the hotel, everyone was ready for a break and another meal. We grabbed a quick dinner down the street and hit the hay to rest up for our longest and busiest day tomorrow.

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