I personally believe that, despite all of the wonderful things we had seen previously, our last day in Rome was one of the best because it gave us the chance to finally sit back and take in everything around us. For the first time really, we were given the chance to let our trip sink in.  It was a wonderfully amazing way to end the whole experience.

We began our day by hopping on a bus and traveling to a large park in the city that was once the front yard of a very wealthy Italian family. The first adventure for many of us was that of the rowboat. The picture above depicts rather nicely the fact that pretty much all of us were new to this rowing business, but despite our struggles, we still had a great time looking silly and bonding with our rowing buddy. However, after twenty brief minutes, our little adventure came to a close.

After the rowboats we split off into our own little groups to further explore the massive park. The group that I happened to belong to went off in search of a “pup” park that was located on the grounds. Sadly, we never found the pup park. Instead, we did find a large, overturned tree next to the lake that looked ideal for climbing, and climb we did. This also led to the discovery that Corey must be part monkey because he practically ran up the side of the tree and had us all laughing at how funny he looked perched on top of the highest point of the tree.

Our day ended in a wonderful little town right outside of Rome called Frascati where our tour guide, Josh, was an extremely fortunate resident. While we were there we took a brief walk around the markets to finish up any last minute shopping we had for family and friends before we met up at seven to go to dinner. Although the food, in my opinion, was the best we had enjoyed on the entire trip, the view of the countryside was really what made this dinner special. As we ate some simply amazing veggie-balls made of eggplant, mozzarella and some other heavenly ingredients, we were able to look out at the mountains, the farms, and even far if off in the distance, Rome. It was the perfect time, and the perfect place to reminisce about everything we had done and seen.

Despite our initial sadness that our trip was coming to a close, we were able to marvel at the fact that it had even happened; that we came, we saw, and we conquered.