My First Run in Rome!

Ah the start of a fresh school year. People laughing, walking to class....a market outside your window at 7am? Welcome to Rome, my home for fall quarter. I'm studying architecture in the eternal city, living in the Campo Di Fiori! Rome is a pretty interesting place. Lots and lots of people, especially tourists, but once the rain comes I think they'll go away. Its pretty hot here though for now.

This morning, I finally felt like going for my first run. I figured, I've been in Rome for 5 days, how lost can I really get? Well, as I promised my mom, I didn't run alone. I convinced my roommate Catharine to venture out with me early in the morning, only an hour and 30 mins before our group met 20 mins away at the Colosseum. We figured we had lots of time to run and shower and get ready. Apparently we didn't quite do the math.

Our run began by waiting for Garmy to find itself. It took so long! I forgot that moving hundreds of miles away from Seattle would confuse it a little bit. After waiting at least 10 or 15 mins for it to register, we were off! People dodging our way out of the campo, we found ourselves in a small side alley heading toward the river (the Tiber). We decided to follow the river on our first run to minimize getting lost. We found a staircase down to the riverside. It smelled an aweful lot like pee which gave me an iffy feeling about the riverside. Did I mention that most of the streets are cobblestones? That's also why we went by the river, it was our hope to avoid the cobblestones. As we decended, I looked ahead and saw beautiful pavement leading to a dirt path. No cobblestones.

We ran down past the island in the tiber, under many bridges and finally decided to turn back and run on the opposite side of the river. I saw a few runners, but on the whole I'm ot sure sure Italian people run, despite the many marathons in their country. As I headed back to the Campo I couldn't help but think about the long runs to come by the river and trough the neighborhoods of Rome.

Happy trails!
Soph