...I go through life without a care - The Wanderer
To start off our week-long Spring break (or Easter break - Osternferien), we thought what better place than Rome? Saturday night, we walked around the neighborhood of our hostel and ended up finding this nice little cafe that we decided to try. This ended up being the best food of the entire time in Rome! Not only was the food delicious, but our charismatic waiter spoke fluent Italian, English, German, and French. We were only mildly impressed. Right. As one who speaks some of 3 of the 4 languages, I just sat in awe while for the most part understanding what he was saying. I want to be like that. So cool, seriously. And Italian, too? Wonderful.
The only protestant in a group of Catholics, I saw the more Catholic side of Rome during our short few days there. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Not at all. Palm Sunday, we were able to score tickets to Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter's, with none other than the pope presiding! Pretty cool, even for us non-Catholics. The square was absolutely packed! Luckily, we thought ahead and got there early (especially good since I mysteriously lost my ticket to the event...something I was ready to take as a sign that I shouldn't be an in cognito protestant at this event. Okay enough Catholic/Protestant comparisons), and therefore got seats "fairly close" - we got a seat, which is more than I can say for about 70% of the people there. But seriously, I've never seen so many Catholics in my life:
Mass ended up being fairly cool and interesting, albeit 3 hours long. As I was already sleep-deprived and didn't understand most of what was being said...AND literally the ENTIRE GOSPEL was sung, I fell asleep. Whoops! I tried not to, I promise. But the entire gospel sung in one church service? Please. I grew up Episcopalian, a church in which people will start very obviously start checking their watches when they think the service is going too long. Only slightly different.
After mass finally ended, we made our way to a) stop and get some YUMMY pizza, and b) to be more touristy! Hitting up the Colosseum, we couldn't help but get in the mood for fighting:
Afterwards we visited the Roman Forum, where we had the best tour guide I've ever encountered, Paul. He really made the history come alive for us as he led us around. He entertained us so much, we were very tempted to take a tour he was doing that night, but thought better of it as our stomachs made their presence and the fact that we hadn't eaten in a long time very evident. We also wanted to catch a few more sites and were second-guessing our abilities to go on a third tour of the day. I know I'm not much of a tour person, so even though we had one really good one, I wouldn't have enjoyed another one quite as much.
The next day we got up super early to climb to the top of St. Peter's Basilica before Mike, Ellen, and Whitney had to head to the airport for their flights back to Vienna (Sue and I were staying another day). 501 steps later, we had:
-passed the first stop towards the top which gave us an inside view of the Basilica
-conquered staircases that began to curve vertically, causing us to walk slanted
-reached the top of where we could climb
-been given beautiful panoramic views of the city:
Naturally, we also saw the inside of the Basilica. It was only slightly RIDICULOUS! If you were to look at a picture of the inside, you would never guess how high the walls go or how big it is in general, unless you were to compare that to the size of the people inside. Looking like ants engulfed by the walls and gates that extended up all the way we had just climbed, we were awestruck by the beauty and grandeur.
After the others left, Sue and I ventured out in search for an authentic and cheap cafe from which to buy lunch. Finally we succeeded - English (for the first time since we arrived in Rome) was nowhere to be heard in this cafe. The guy we ordered our food (with the pointing system that works for all languages) didn't speak a lick of English. We knew we were in for a treat, an idea that was confirmed the moment we put the food in our mouths. The bread literally melted in my mouth as the cheese and meat provided the perfect compliment. Adding a few cups of strong Italian coffee made the meal perfect and just what I needed to get through the rest of the day after less than adequate sleep for the previous few nights.
A trip to the Vatican museum left me with just one word: wow. Not the biggest fan of the Sistine Chapel - overrated and too busy in my opinion - I was consistently amazed by all the rest of the artwork, from that on the ceilings and walls:
to the tapestries, the elaborate floors, the newer art exhibit, and more. I took a lot of pictures there. Feel free to look at as many or as few as you desire. If you're not the biggest fan of art, I would suggest skipping about 100 of the pictures, which are pretty much all from the exhibit. I told you I was impressed.
The next morning after a lot of crazy running around to try to find our way to the airport, a venture made mildly more complicated by the vague Italian directions and the lack of any signs pointing us in the right direction, we finally grabbed a cab and made it to the airport with 5 minutes to spare before check-in for our flight closed, and about 10 minutes before boarding began. With a sigh of relief as we got in line to board, we pushed out of our minds the ponderings on what to do if stranded in Rome.
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