All Roads Lead to Rome.

Disclaimer: This post was written the night of Friday, June 15, but I couldn't post until now. I'm very sorry about that.

All Roads Lead to Rome.

OK so another busy day. No time to waste, so let’s jump right in.

I woke up this morning to the craziest bird call I have ever heard. While most the girls were getting ready, I spent most my time out on our balcony just watching people in their homes.

It was perfect for people watching. It’s a pretty noisy courtyard. There weren’t really any dull moments. The Chinese family beneath us is always cooking something delicious and they taunt me with the smell, these Italians next to us are always yelling and arguing about something, and this other random man was just staring back at me. At this point I went back in and got changed
So we walked back over to the main building and had some cereal before heading out to the Vatican. We mobilized all twelve of us for today’s outing. We devoted the entire day to the Vatican because we were told that it would definitely take the entire day.

The Vatican. For those of you back home who don’t know much about the Vatican, here’s a few facts. The Vatican is the world’s smallest nation, covering just 120 acres of land and is a theocracy of just over 550 citizens.

Courtyard in the Vatican. Inside the Vatican, there are many museums and exhibits, the Sistine chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica.

After riding the rail down to the Vatican, we decided to go through the museum side first.

This is a door to pope Benedict the XVIThe goal was to reach the Sistine Chapel, which lay towards the very end. This proved to be much more difficult than I had originally imagined. We felt like a tour guide would be too much of a hassle if we wanted to go at our own leisurely pace. Instead, we rented audio guides. There is simply too much to see.

Bryan drinking from the water of life.Me, Laura, Kacie, Jennifer, Rebecca and Clair spent over an hour in this one exhibit with all sorts of paintings that dated back into the 13th and 14th centuries. Most of the paintings were related to scripture, depicting scenes, but some canonized fallen martyrs. Well, basically every single painting involved either Mary with her child, the crucifixion, or someone dying. I was mostly amazed by the sheer size of some of the paintings. So highlights of the museum included some paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Raphael (insert last name). The most famous work in the museum was the Transfiguration by Raphael. The painting itself is gorgeous.

The transfiguartion by Raphael.It’s amazing how preserved the vivid colors have remained over time. Anyways so we spent over an hour in there, and I felt like I hadn’t even seen half of the paintings.

Liger. Mythical creature. -Napoleon dynamite.What I didn’t realize is that at the beginning we were given a map that marked out where everything was. I assumed that we had hit most of the numbers on the map just by walking through that one museum alone. False. It was just one of about 20 things on the map to see. We decided that we were going to try and power through everything else until we reached the Sistine Chapel. However, before that, lunch.

We ate at the self serve cafeteria in the bottom of the museum. It was actually pretty good. We all had pasta, salad, and some fruit. Clair had some lamb and mint flavored chips, that I ended up eating. Delicious.

Girls sitting in a courtyard.Heading inside.

Clair happy about something.

So back to powering through. This did not work well at all. Every time we’d tried to power through a section, something absolutely stunning would get in our way and we would have to stop and stare. Thus powering through became a selective “breezing” process if you will. What I came to realize is that there is absolutely no way anyone person could see most of the Vatican in under two days. There is just so much to see. At times I felt unappreciative just walking past all the gorgeous paintings.

I think these are by Raphael. But the goal is the Sistine Chapel, so I kept going. Seriously around every turn, I would start to get excited. But every turn took us to something that would make my jaw literally drop.

Hallway covered in tapestries. The ceiling was amazing. So basically I went from picture to picture punching in the audio tour number that corresponded to each painting, trying to get the gist of it. When it started to get kinda boring I would skip to the next one. I tried to apply what little I remembered from Mr. Thompson’s 10th grade world history class of painters in the Renaissance era to the paintings. I learned about the major hitters: Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael. But I never realized how much Raphael had actually done. This guy had some serious talent and he only live until the age of 37. I really enjoyed looking at some of his work. Yall have all probably seen the School Of Athens where Plato is pointing up at the sky and Aristotle is pointing down to the floor. Very famous.

Here it is.
At one point I walked down the hallways and refused to look at anything because I knew I would get see something shiny and get distracted.

When we finally reached the Sistine Chapel, I was deeply saddened to find out that there was no photography allowed whatsoever. This was terrible. There was no way that I could take enough mental pictures to be able to remember all of it. They had camera patrolmen walking around yelling at people to be quiet and turn off their cameras. People still managed to sneak photos here and there with cell phones and hiding their cameras near their waist, snapping shots. This one group of Hispanic guys formed what I like to call the human photo wall. Three guys stood in a row facing the camera patrolmen, and the fourth crouched behind them and took pictures. Tsk tsk tsk. The chapel was everything I have envisioned it to be and more. I couldn’t believe the breadth of ceiling that the pictures covered. I noted the traditional image most people think about when the see the Sistine Chapel, God and Adam almost touching fingers. But the rest of the murals were equally amazing. It was kinda tough pointing out everything the audio tour guide said, but we did our best to try and keep up. I will spare you my attempts to describe the chapel in all its beauty and glory. I literally stood in one spot for about 45 minutes and stared straight up. My neck hurts pretty bad, but it was well worth it. Eventually we had to leave to go to St. Peter’s Basilica before it closed for the day.

Spiraling Staircase out.On our way out, we ran into the couple who had just got engaged the night before at the Trevi Fountain. The girls forced me to chase them down and talk to them, so I did. I basically told them congratulations and that it was one of the most impressive displays I had ever seen. I also told them that I took some pictures during the process and asked them if they wanted me to e-mail them. The guy especially was really happy about this because along the way he hadn’t planned a photographer to take pictures of the engagement. So he wrote down his e-mail address, real address, and multiple phone numbers. Apparently the happy couple is from the big apple. They said if I was every in New York, they’d take me out for a drink. I didn’t turn them down. We also had a good laugh about the irritating flower salesmen. Apparently, the engagement we saw was only the beginning of their night. They went to dinner in really wet clothes.

Onto St. Peter’s Basilica. It is arguably the largest building in Christianity. It spans an area of 5.7 acres and has a capacity of 60,000 persons. Peter was one of the 12 apostles, known as the rock upon which the church would be built.

Sky view.

St. Peter's courtyard.

Me and a fountain.

Clair, Rebecca, Jennifer, Kacie, Laura, and me.

From the ground

Jennifer and Kacie in front of the Basilica.

Statues on the roof.

Dress code for the Vatican. They will turn you away. It's like Westwood highschool again. warriors holla.

I was completely and utterly rendered speechless. I couldn’t get over the enormity of the cathedral. I was trying to imagine how engineers and architects in the past were able to construct something so vast. I think the dome is the largest free standing dome in the world.

Inside.

Inside.

Inside

Inside.

A project of this magnitude today would like decades to finish, even with the tools and resources available to us. There were statues and paintings literally adorning every wall and crevice of the cathedral.

St. Peter. Apparently you are suppsoed to walk by and touch his feet and do the Catholic touch your forehead chest deal.

The lighting and overall ambiance was amazing. They had single windows positioned in certain places that let in floods of light where you could literally see the beams coming in.

Kacie and light.

It was also very fitting that they had a service happening at the same time too. The choir singing added to the overall atmosphere of the church.

ServiceOn any given day, there probably could be about 9 or 10 services running concurrently. It’s really that big. There are mini chapels all throughout.

Wall listing all the previous popes.Another main feature of the Basilica is the tombs of the popes. Beneath the ground level is a sub-level where many of the previous popes, some dating back to the 1200s. There are some 100 tombs underneath St. Peter's Basilica, 91 of which are previous popes. It was funny because the tombs very closing right as we were gone down below. So the guards literally walked directly behind us and like shoo-ed us along. Then when we would come to a fork, another guard would like outstretch his arms and close of the section. It felt very much like we were being herded like sheep or something. We did see Pope JEventually we got to the end of the tombs, met up with the group, and left.

We reached the hostel around 7ish so we could eat the free pasta and salad they have everyday. Now freestyle is supposed to have some surprise for you if it’s your birthday. But they did not specify what. So the first night we got there, we talked to them about doing that surprise for Kacie and they agreed. But they did it tonight instead of last night, I don’t know why. They also pretty much ruined the surprise by constantly asking her what she wanted. Eventually they caught on about the surprise. Tito and his boss Kumar ended up buying a cake and two bottles of cheap champagne. However, they didn’t have any candles. Kumar asked me if I could go get them because he had to keep serving dinner. I had absolutely no idea where anything was but I went anyways. The first place I went was to the shop that we had previously bought water from. So the people who worked there were Chinese, and I overheard them speaking Mandarin, so I was like this is good. English didn’t work and my Chinese was rusty. For some reason I couldn’t remember the word for candle, so I kept describing cake, birthday, and fire. She tried to give me a lighter like 10 times. Eventually she directed me to a convenience store two blocks away. So I ran there and then it got bad. No one spoke any Chinese or English. I was like ehhh. So I walked around the aisles for a while until I saw numbered candles, and I was really relieved. BUT there were only 8’s and 0’s left. So I was like.. 20 is 1/4th of 80, this could work. So I bought these and ran back. So when cake time rolled around, we only used the 8 and everything went pretty smoothly. I’m not sure if she expected it even though she was pretty tipped off.

Jennifer, Kacie, and Lesley. Notice the 8 on top of the cake.At the end, there was one piece of cake left, and Kumar came up with the brilliant idea of drawing names for the last piece. Whoever had their name drawn had to eat the entire piece in one bite. It was Deepa, she did not do it. Then Kumar threw whip cream in her face. Then on Lesley and Kacie. Then I got owned. We all had a great time.

Facial

Rebecca, me and Clair chunking up the deuce.

After dinner/cake we decided to go down to the Colosseum again to see it lit up at night. Once again, it was amazing. I really don’t need to describe it to you. But we did take a lot of pictures, some serious, but mostly goofy ones.

No smiling allowed apparently. Bryan, Me, Michael

Bryan and Deepa

Girls in black. Michelle, Lesley, Deepa

Me.

Charlie's Angels.

Girls circle. In no particular order: Deepa, Laura, Jennifer, Rebecca, Clair, Kacie, Michelle, Lesley.

Once again, we had some gelato, which seems to be a major theme in our trip to Rome. For every night, there must be some gelato. So we sat and chatted for a while, then headed back. Michelle, Deepa, Clair, Lesley, and Brian stayed back to go to an ice bar. Apparently it’s a bar made entirely of ice at about -5 degrees centigrade. Pretty cold. They all had a great time.

Deepa's picture, Bryan, Lesley, Clair, and Michelle. Solar blankets.Clair came back and had broke her sandal and fixed it with duct tape. Nice. Tomorrow, we are headed to the Pantheon and then to Ostia. We won’t be sleeping in the hostel at night. Instead we will be taking a night train and spending the early morning hours in a train station until our flight. Should be interesting. I need to get some sleep.

Mi scusi,

James