villa borghese

since we didnt have class on monday, we decided to go visit the spanish steps and villa borghese, which is a giant park - kind of like central park in new york. according to wikipediaaaaa, villa borghese is a large landscape garden in the naturalistic english manner in rome, containing a number of buildings, museums, and attractions. it is the 2nd largest public park in rome. the gardens were developed for the villa borghese pinciana, built by the architect flaminio ponzio. in 1605, cardinal scipione borghese, nephew of pop paul v and patron of bernini, began turning this former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in rome since antiquity. pictures cant do it justice, but here are a few...

from top to bottom

1. spanish steps looking up

2. from the top of the steps with the vatican in the background

3. walkway in villa borghese

4. creeping on some couple on the lake

after getting back and getting all the roommates together, we decided to go out to dinner (all 10 of us - but we were missing 1). a lot of stores are closed mondays, so it was slightly difficult to find something that was open, especially since we were starving by 7, and most places dont serve dinner til 8. we finally found this cute little place a couple blocks from our apartment, we couldnt read/understand the name of it to save our lives. but i ordered a cacio e pepe spaghetti (cheese and pepper sauce over noodles) and it was probably the best thing ive had here. soooo good. i looked up some recipes and plan on making it for myself while im staying in rome.

interesting story...

so we were waiting to go to our 6:00 class at our apartment last night. i was sitting at my bed (which is right under a window) and heard tires screeching and cars colliding in the alley below my window. i justped up to see what was going on, and it definitely didnt seem like an accident since they were almost fighting at the corner. i also heard sirens coming from one of the cars. i saw a man jump out of his car with a gun when i yelled to my roommates. we saw one of the cars get away but the other one was still in the alley. we ended up calling our professor since we didnt want to leave for class when we had seen a guy running around with a gun. she called our landlord and the police for us, and class was cancelled. steph and i, which saw most of what happened, were supposed to give statements to the police but then we didnt have to. our professor said it was "police in plain clothes" - so undercover, but it was still scary seeing that. we never really figured out what happened but our professor let us know that crime like that never happens and that it had to have been something with the police involved. the crime here deals with tourists and pickpocketing apparently. our landlord practically laughed at our concern since compared to a city this size in the usa, rome is extremely safe.