SPQR.

It seems absurd to think about how small the world really is, considering the significant places I have been in the past two weeks. Only a little over a week ago I was viewing the Mona Lisa in Paris, Big Ben in London before that. Now I am in Rome enjoying excellent weather and the Coliseum and Vatican city, tomorrow I will be back up in the Italian Alps and the day after hiking through the Swiss Mountains. Modern travel rocks my world.

Trento turned out to be extremely fun. We ate great food and it was really relaxing to have some fresh air away from the clustered tourist exhibits we were growing accustomed to. Both days in Trento we hiked up the snowy Alps and tried our hand (most miserably) at snowboarding and other snow sports. It was ridiculously warm on the mountain, despite there being 5 feet of snow in some places. After hiking we would head back to the house for some Italian hot chocolate (more like hot chocolate/pudding) and hanging out. We played a lot of music, sang karoake (both in Italian and English), and even experienced being a double-minority (in gender and language) when we went out for pizza with 8 Italian girls to celebrate Italy's "National Women's Day"

We left Trento on early Monday morning to catch a train to Venice, where we spent the next 13 hours until a night train would take us to Rome. Venice was interesting, but there are no major landmarks or very touristy things to do (unless you pay 140 bucks for a gondola ride). So, we wandered around - literally wandered since the streets are interwoven with the various channels that have given the city its popularity. It is a very small city and you are able to walk from one side to the other very quickly. We enjoyed a lot of stops, sitting down to rest and read by the rivers.

Our night train to Rome was so-so. We met an italian guy our age who was fun to talk to and he spotted us each a sandwich and a snickers bar - a very welcome midnight snack. We slept little on the train as it was extremely cold and we had no blankets, but we felt refreshed once the sun came out in Rome.

Rome was great - I only have a brief time to write, so it will not do the city justice. We saw the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, Palitine hill, huge churches, thousands-of-years-old buildings and other amazing structures. This has been a great place for me, the Coliseum being my favorite thing. The weather has also been profoundly wonderful, usually close to 60 and sunny. Today we head out for Vatican City, which I hear is enormous in the number of famous sculptures and rich art history. Who knows...maybe we'll even see the Pope?