Rome, Italy

Literally every direction you look while walking around the city you will feast your eyes on some form of artwork, whether it be architecture, sculptures, statues or landscaping. Today we spent the day wandering around the Villa Borghese Gardens (a must see). Our first stop was the Borghese Gallery, which we had to reserve our spot for earlier that day. The Borghese Gallery is an art gallery housing beautiful marble sculptures and paintings throughout 20 rooms. It was almost overwhelming walking through the gallery because every room was covered in a painting from the ceiling to the ground and then there were also many amazing sculptures in each room. I enjoyed seeing artwork by Bernini and Cavona in person as I've studied their work before.

After the museum we took a much needed nap on a seating wall out front. The heat really drains you!

We spent the rest of the afternoon finding new places to check out in the park. There were fountains everywhere we looked! I love how you can drink right from most of the fountains; free water is always nice!

I wanted to wake up at sunrise to miss the crowds and see some of the tourist attractions, but we settled at waking up at 7. We stopped at a coffee place that our tour guide recommended and drank lattes and a coffee mouse that was so yummy! Then we headed to Piazza Navona and saw the three fountains. Afterwards we walked to Fontana di Trevi. We made it there by 9ish and there were already plenty of people there. Lastly we headed to the Spanish Steps and it was packed. The men who try to sell you roses by forcing you to hold them and then follow you for money were already there. I guess I learned that you can't beat the crowds in a city like this, you just have to share the beauty.

We were recommended a restaurant by our tour guide from the Palatine Hill tour so we decided to eat there for dinner. It was quite delicious and reasonably priced, and our tour guide showed up! Afterwards we went to a theatre that our host we were staying with worked at. She recommended going because it was free entertainment. We stayed for a bit to hear two wonderful Italian singers but we left after an Italian poet came on stage and we couldn't understand him. It was a great experience to see what the locals do for fun.