I realize I have been a bit lax on my posting, so get excited for a barrage of posts in the upcoming days (hopefully...)!
On the weekend of October 31 to November 2, Hannah, Flan, and Christie, and I went to Rome. Hannah and I flew out separately from the other two to meet them there. We, once again, woke up at the absolute crack of dawn to take a cab to the bus station, a bus to Madrid, the metro to the airport, and then the plane to Rome. About 85% of those travels were spent with at least one of us in a comatose state. We arrived in Rome without problems and then managed to catch the train from the airport into the city after breaking into a near sprint in order to catch the one that departed about 10 minutes after our plane landed. We arrived at the city, no problems, and checked into our hostel, which turned out to be our very own apartment as opposed to a dirty multiple people hostel. That was a pretty nice surprise. Unfortunately, Hannah and I didn't have much time to enjoy this fact, as we had made arrangements to have a "skip the line" entrance to the Vatican Museums at 2:30, so we had to book it over there to meet our group.
We successfully navigated the metro system with one tiny "oops". Two stops were marked as the Vatican Museum, and Hannah and I zoned out on the metro. When I snapped to attention, we had arrived at the 1st one, which I assumed was ours, so I hopped off and insisted Hannah come with me. She then insisted that I come back onto the train and consequently pulled me back onto the train just as the doors were shutting. Essentially, my one arm and my face was completely smushed between the doors, and Hannah couldn't get them open, so it was altogether embarrassing and painful. We managed to pry the doors open, get me back onto the train, and complete the ride without any additional issues, aside from my bright, burning red cheeks. I had been in Rome for about an hour before looking like a big fat dumb tourist. Oh well...
We tracked down our group outside the Vatican Museum entrance and got right into the museum without any obstacles. This museum is HUGE, GIGANTIC, AND OVERWHELMING. In all seriousness, the amount of artwork in the museum was ridiculous. Some of the display rooms looked like storage units for statues or busts rather than actual museum exhibits. We walked and walked and walked, following the signs for the Sistine Chapel. Along the way, we saw some notable paintings from Raphael, including The School of Athens which was pretty cool to see in person. We saw the Hall of Maps, which had paintings of maps of Italy throughout its history, which was also interesting to observe. Finally, we arrived at the heralded Sistine Chapel, and it was a lot different than I expected. In all honesty, I thought the ceiling would consist only of that famous painting with God and Adam nearly touching fingers. In reality, this painting was about 1/100th of all of the art in the chapel. There were creation scenes all over the ceiling, and the art was just overwhelming. I wish I would have had binoculars to see the details, especially after learning that Michelangelo became frustrated with his assistants and decided to fire them all, completing the vast majority of the work himself! We technically weren't allowed to take pictures in the chapel, and by technically, I mean large Italian men would bellow at you if you did, but I managed to snag a few pics AND avoid being the target of an Italian bellowing, so all in all, I call this trip to the chapel a success.
After the Sistine Chapel, we headed over to St. Peter's, the main church of the Vatican. This, similar to the Museum, was gigantic and overwhelming. We saw Michelangelo's Pieta, which was securely locked up behind glass after a lunatic took a hammer to it in the 1970s. We got to walk around this massive church, which is more than 2 football fields long (fact courtesy of Jenna Lusk). It was gigantic, and everything was beautiful and/or gigantic as well. Coincidentally, we met up with Flan and Christie there, and the four of us headed out into the rainy Roman day to continue our adventures.
Christie, Hannah, and I stopped at a cafe near the Vatican for a little pick me up, and our waiter was ridiculously enthusiastic in addition to surprisingly knowledgeable about the United States and American pop culture. He knew Pennsylvania, and then started asking if we were Amish from Lancaster. Once he determined we were more Pittsburgh than Philadelphia, he started rattling off the sports teams, saying that the Steelers were good and the Pirates were bad. It was such a shock to be talking Pittsburgh sports in Rome! He also found it necessary to compare Christie to Demi Moore, although he could never seem to remember the name "Demi" so he decided instead to call her "Michael Moore" until we corrected him, as Demi Moore and Michael Moore are a bit different, to say the least. He then called her "Denny" about 1000 times, including shouting it to her from the opposite side of the cafe. It was definitely a surreal experience, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.
After dinner, the three of us met up with some of Christie's friends who are studying abroad in Rome, and we had amazingly delicious pasta and gelato for dinner. Afterwards, we walked around a bit and saw the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps at night, which was very nice. Unfortunately, Hannah and I had been up since about 4 AM, so we were ready to call it an early night.
On Saturday, Hannah and I got up and went straight to the Colosseum, which completely took me by surprise, since we literally ascended from the Metro Station, and THERE IT WAS. It was so huge, and really amazing to see in person. We waited in line and then toured the inside, which was well worth both the wait and the admission price. They had reconstructed 1/5 of the floor of the colisseum, where the gladiators and beasts would fight, but they left the other 4/5 undone so that we could see the ruins of the holding pens where the competitors were kept before actually fighting on the floor. The stadium held 50,000 at is peak, and after being inside, I am honestly surprised that that number is so low. The stadium was completely gigantic and just made you feel like a tiny little ant as you stood inside of it and gazed all around you. After the Colisseum, we headed over to the Roman Forum, and waited in line for an obscene amount of time, since the European notion of "a line" largely consists of people going wherever they want, whenever they want, regardless of who was there first. Additionally, there was a bit of a bottleneck as the admission gate had one worker who had to scan everyone's ticket, and the scanner was a bit antiquated, so each visitor's interaction with the worker was probably a full minute. Before entering in line for the Forum, we had decided to see the Forum and then grab lunch, since we were already hungry by that point in time. Well, by the time we actually got into the Forum, we were starving and pretty frustrated, so our time in the Forum was pretty brief. We toured around and saw tons and tons of ruins, way more than I initially expected, and then decided to call it a day and head out for lunch. We stopped at a little cafe, had some more delicious pasta, went to the Trevi Fountain to see it during the day and had some more delicious gelato (notice a trend?). We then walked over to the Pantheon to see Rome's best-preserved ancient building. It was pretty intimidating of a building, very huge and dark and manly, I guess. After the Pantheon, we were ready to shop, which was a moderate success. Hannah and I both managed to track down some pretty good souvenir stuff and then had less success shopping for ourselves, as all of the stores were packed to the brim with other shoppers. We decided to cut our shopping trip short and then went back to the hotel for a nap.
After our rest, we headed out for dinner, which was more pasta at another completely random cafe. That was one of my favorite parts about Rome...you could eat ANYWHERE (or at least all of the places I saw looked at least good if not great) and walk away very satisfied. During the meal, my Mom texted me the halftime score of the Pitt-Notre Dame game, and I read it out loud to Hannah. Shortly thereafter, an elderly couple at the table next to us asked me to repeat what I had said, and they turned out to be Notre Dame fans! The wife explained that the husband had been unhappy that he had no way of tracking down the score, so they were excited to have me as an unanticipated source of ND information. It always amazes me how small the world is...I definitely did not expect to be discussing Notre Dame football with anyone in Rome, except maybe Hannah! After satiating ourselves with super yummy and super carb-y pasta, we had gelato...again...and it was delicious....again. We then headed back to the hostel and watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in Italian, which was interesting to say the least.
On Sunday, we woke up and were set on going to mass at St. Peter's. I was a bit nervous, since I had a tiny rolling suitcase, and some public locations won't let you in with luggage, as a safety precaution. We decided to take a chance, and I made it through the metal detectors without any problems, and then I found a luggage storage room which was a blessing, since it was free, there was no line, and the people were super friendly, which is not something that can be said for every European I have encountered thus far. Some, yes, others...not so much. We then headed into mass, which was pretty long, but it was really kind of awing to be at mass in the Vatican. The processional had tons of bishops, priests, and even cardinals, and the choir was absolutely amazing. Hannah and I left the church feeling pleased with having successfully gone to mass in one of the most famous churches in the world when we noticed a huge group of people in St. Peter's Square. There was also some sort of barricade holding the crowd back. I thought it might be for the next mass in the Basilica, but then Hannah noticed everyone peering up at a window in one of the buildings surrounding the square. From the window sill hung a deep red cloth that looked pretty darned Papal to me. We decided to wait it out for a little bit, and sure enough, within about 5 minutes, Pope Benedict XVI came to the window and spoke to the masses. He prayed the angelus with the crowd, in Italian, and then provided a blessing in Italian. As Hannah and I were secretly wishing we understood Italian, he switched to French, which led us to secretly which we understood Italian OR French. Then, he switched to English, and a large section of the crowd cheered. I'll be honest, his English had such a heavy accent that I didn't even notice it was English until Hannah told me...yikes! He welcomed us and then provided a blessing, which I managed to catch on my camera. I am pretty sure Papal blessings that are captured on digital camera and then uploaded to a blog still count, so you should all feel very spiritually touched after watching this: (note...he switches to German toward the end, so don't be confused)
We then left, hearing a Spanish blessing in the background. I actually had an easier time understanding his Spanish than his English, which I guess means either (a) I am getting better at listening to Spanish, or (b) his English was RIDICULOUSLY accented, to the point of being difficult to understand. I vote A.
We were all spiritually fulfilled after being blessed by the Pope himself, so we decided to be fulfilled stomach-wise, as well, and had some more pasta and gelato before catching the train back to the airport. The only real notable point in our journey home occurred when Hannah declared she had to go the bathroom upon our arrival to the train station (fyi: this sort of declaration from Hannah is not terribly rare, and I'll leave it at that.). However, when she sought out the bathroom, it was nowhere to be found, and we had to board the train, so she was not pleased. We then had a 30 minute train ride and went straight to security after getting to the aiport. Hannah carries a tin water bottle with her, and at this point in time, it was completely full of water. Not surprisingly, this did not pass the "3 ounces" rule for liquids on carry-ons, so she was presented with the options of throwing away the entire bottle or returning to the very beginning of the security line to pour out the water. She wasn't pleased with either of these choices, so she decided to return to the other side of the metal detector, chug her water, and then go through security for the 2nd time. I had assumed she was just going to pour her water out, so after a few minutes, I started looking around to see where she was. I was surprised to find her chugging away at her water, bouncing from foot to foot with a pained expression on her face. Of course, adding insult to injury, when she passed through the metal detector for the 2nd time, some piece of metal caused the machine to beep after she had had no issues the 1st time through. She then had to be patted down by a lovely Italian security guard, all the while she is bouncing up and down, hoping not to lose bladder control in the airport. Once she passed through security, she scurried as fast as anyone can scurry to the nearest bathroom. It was definitely a comical series of observations from my point of view.
So, all in all, Rome was pretty much amazing, and all the sites were huge and overwhelming while all of the food was delicious!
Love from Spain,
Jill
(I realize this post doesn't have many pictures, so you will just have to check out my albums on Picasa!)
No comments:
Post a Comment