AVVENTURE IN ITALIA: A VISUAL TOUR
Katlyn havlin, McAuley
This summer, I traveled to Italy and was accompanied
by six other McAuley students. We spent six days
overseas in the familiar boot-shaped country. It was my
first expedition outside of the United States of America.
We left mid-day on July 6th of 2017. We
landed in Paris, France where we missed
our connecting flight, which should have
been a bad thing. However, we got to
spend three hours in a Paris airport where
we tried our first macarons and had our first
taste of European food: airline terminal
sandwiches. After our stop in Paris, we got
back on a plane to Milan. Once we arrived
in Milan, we had to take a train to Florence.
We were tired and running late, so all we
did our first night in Florence was eat a
pasta dinner and get settled in our hotel.
The next morning, it hit us; we were
really in Italy. Italy was beautiful and
lively and...
hot. So hot. There was no air condit
ioning in our hotel but our room did
have a bidet and an
interesting shower that had no basin
to prevent water from getting all ove
r the floor.
While in Florence, we walked aroun
d the city and went to some museums
. From Florence, we
traveled to Rome. Rome was amazing
. Pictures don’t capture the detail tha
t lays in every piece
of ancient stone that can be found in
Rome. I got to visit and enter the Co
losseum. The
Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheater,
is huge, massive, and genuinely grand
iose. I couldn’t
fathom how giant it was until I was
right next to it. It accommodated the
numerous tourists
well and it is believed that, when in use
, it held up to 50,000 people. We wa
lked on a few of the
Seven Hills of Rome and visited the
Capitoline Museum which was really
cool. The Capitoline
Museum houses many well known art
pieces. Notably, the Capitoline Wolf
bronze sculpture. It
is a personal favorite of mine and we
have a replica in Cincinnati. We saw
the house of Livia and
walked through the forum. The street
s of Italy are beautiful in their own rig
ht and the
architecture there is truly masterful and
artistic. We visited the Vatican and wa
lked through the
Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basili
ca. We hiked up some of the Spanish
Stairs and visited the
Trevi Fountain.
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