Roma

I BARELY made it to the train station on time. Waking up was PAINFUL; not necessarily cuz I had drank the night before but prolly more due to the fact that I had only gotten a total of three hours of sleep.

I got on the train at 7:50 and it pulled out of the station at exactly 7:52. Yea. I was the LAST person in my class to get there, but hey… give me some credit, atleast I made it (one girl called when we were half way there to tell our TA that she had just woken up and that she’d meet up with us in Rome later).

Oh yea… my two-day trip to Rome was a field trip for my Michelangelo class. I was half excited and half annoyed about having to go on it. Excited because, hey! It’s Rome! I’ve always wanted to go to Rome! Annoyed because Brittany was my only friend in the class and she and I weren’t even that close. Everything turned out to be waaaay better than I could have ever possibly imagined it.

I slept the whole ride there (I was DEAD from the night before)… but the second we got there we were on our feet moving around being busy until I fell asleep that night at midnight. Okay… our day in Rome…

(10:00AM) S. Pietro in Vincoli: After taking the really smelly Roman metro (no but seriously though, it really was smelly and gross), and walking up a million stairs we arrived at our first destination to view Michelangelo’s Moses. The Moses was supposed to be only part of the tomb for Pope Julius II BUT since Mike NEVER FINISHES ANYTHING, the it is actually the main attraction of the tomb. It was a powerful powerful sculpture. I stood there looking at it for about 10 minutes waiting for it to move! Haha. After viewing the piece we congregated on the steps outside the church to hear one of my classmates’ presentations on the piece. I had a headache and was distracted by the guys that were working on the building across the street because one of the guys kept yelling, “Sono Michelangelo!” Hahaha.

(10:50AM) Campidoglio/AKA Capitoline Hill: Many many many more stairs (thank goodness I’m not on crutches anymore!) I was a little bit disappointed with Capitoline… in person it’s not as great as I thought it was going to be. All the pictures I’ve ever seen of it are from birds-eye-view and I think that seeing it like that does it more justice than actually standing in the piazza. Michelangelo was a freakin genius though. There were so many things during the presentation on Capitoline that made me think, wow, really??? Bytheway, Roman pigeons are out of control… about three times during the presentation, the girl talking almost got hit in the face by pigeons flying by. I was scared for her…

(12:20) S. Maria sopra Minerva: After walking down some dangerous Roman streets that have small, and very uneven cobblestones, AND lots very fast moving vespas and cars we arrived at S. Maria and were able to view Michelangelo’s Risen Christ. This work was said to be Michelangelo’s “biggest failure,” because of how badly the proportions are and how the apprentice that Michelangelo hired to finish it really messed up the fingers and the face… It was still a very very very moving sculpture. It’s funny because Michelangelo decided to depict Christ naked with a cross but years later the church flipped out and wouldn’t have that soooo he appears today awkwardly covered up with a brass cloth. It’s an interesting piece and if anyone is going to be in Rome and is interested in art, I recommend that you stop to check out the Risen Christ.

(12:50) Pantheon: It has nothing to do with Michelangelo but since we had to walk by it on the way to our hotel, Hatfield (our teacher) let us run in to check it out. The thing that I was most fascinated by was how freaking HUGE it is. I can’t imagine how they built that thing way back when… I feel like even buildings today can’t compare to it in size.

(1:00) Hotel Ara Pacis: After trekking about 15 minutes thru the city we arrived at our hotel… to get to the lobby we had to go up ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE stairs! There were so many freaking stairs that I counted them for everyone… by the time we got to the lobby everyone was huffing and puffing and was ready to pass out. I ended up rooming with Brittany Ok, I love love love Brittany. She’s one of the funniest people I have ever met! We first met each other waay back when before SCU at one of the SCU freshmen backyard barbeques, and have always seen each other at school and said hi and stuff but hadn’t really ever hung out until Rome. I was grateful to have her there with me because all the rest of the people were um… yea… I’ll get to them later… and a girl named Alyssa.

The three of us stopped and grabbed some panini from a bar (where I was elbowed REALLY hard by some guy and the bartender who saw gave me a little massage so that the pain would go away… haha, it’s great being a girl) on the way to our next destination at the Vatican. We had a few extra minutes and grabbed gelato and sat and relaxed in a park. Chatting was fun; Brittany and I actually have way more in common than I thought we did so it was really cool to get to know her. Alyssa randomly is best friends at college (she goes to Claremont) with one of my friends, Jamie, from high school… small small world.

(3:15) Saint Peter’s: The Vatican is awesome. The colonnade alone was really cool to see… we took a million pictures. Before going into Saint Peter’s we sat on the steps and listened to a presentation on the Michelangelo’s Pieta. I was distracted by several things during the presentation… firstly, there was a man sitting behind us and I’m pretty sure he was talking louder than I’ve ever heard anyone talk, to the guy sitting next to him. Secondly, my advil was starting to wear off and my head was starting to hurt, ugh. And thirdly, sitting next to us on the steps there was a man (liek, a tourist man, not a homeless man) with his shirt off… tanning. Um hello!!! WE’RE AT THE FREAKING VATICAN… ONE OF THE MOST HOLY PLACES IN THE WHOLE PLANET AND YOU’RE SITTING THERE WITH YOUR FAT GUT HANGING OUT TANNING! It was very inappropriate and distracting at the same time. Tourists are retarded sometimes.

After waiting in line to climb the dome of Saint Peter’s but not being able to because it was closed for the afternoon, we were given a few minutes to check out the Pieta and the rest of the cathedral. The Pieta was smaller but more beautiful than I imagined it to be. That piece is amazing to me. Mary’s face and clothing couldn’t be more angelic and perfect. I took a picture but it came out blurry… the whole no flash thing and the fact that I was using a new camera (the little one my mom gave me instead of my other since I let Marilena use it for her trip this weekend to Venice) really threw off some of my pictures. After a few minutes of admiring the Pieta, Brittany and I went to explore the rest of Saint Peter’s which was HUGE. Once again, the fact that they were able to build something THAT gigantic so long ago is a hard concept to grasp. AND every inch of the entire place was decorated… I was excited because as I walked around I recognized (and even remembered a few random facts) about a lot of the pieces in the cathedral.

Brittany and I started to get a little restless and started fooling around by taking pictures of ourselves in front of some of the statues while standing the same pose they were standing in. While I was mid pose, one of the guards came up to us and we got in big trouble. At the time I was having so much fun that I didn’t really realize that exaggerating the poses of super famous religious sculptures, in a super holy cathedral, with really retarded expressions on our faces, could be seen as really disrespectful… heh. Makes a little more sense now though. Whoopsie!

(5:00PM) Coffee break: Brittany and I bought a bunch of postcards then planted ourselves across the street from our next meeting place and ordered cappuccinos. Our waiter loved us. Liek, he told us I love you. Hahaha. When we got our cappuccinos the word “love” was written into them with chocolate – of course I took a picture. Other girls from my class came and met up with us; it was weird because I really didn’t know ANY of them. They were nice… but not really my type of people (if that makes sense)? I dunno… it was weird.

(6:15) PRIVATE VIEWING OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL: This was the moment we had all been waiting for. Since day 1 we have been learning about the Sistine Chapel since it was probably THE most incredible display of Michelangelo’s talent (well, actually talent in general) that the world has ever seen. The Vatican Museum and chapel closed at 4:00… our group of thirty was the only people in the museum when we went in. It was such an incredible experience I can hardly think of the words to describe or explain it.

Well, first of all… how we gained private access to the Sistine Chapel. Our teacher, Professor Hatfield, is world famous because of his research and various published books and articles on Michelangelo. People at the Vatican know him by name. Whenever we look at Mike piece, Hatfield can talk about it for hours and hours (and he does) because the man literally knows every detail there is to know about Michelangelo.

So there we were in the Vatican Museum which was AWESOME. Everything about that museum was beautiful; the hallways, the ceilings, the mosaics on the floors… everything. Our first stop was in the rooms painted by Rafael and we got to see the School of Athens (which was so freaking incredible)!!! Rafael knew his stuff… I love love love looking at his paintings and admire him for his work on every single one of them. Also, most of them had just been recently restored so they were in top shape.

Then after going through a huge maze of incredibly beautiful hallways… we got to the Sistine Chapel. I stood there for a good 15 minutes admiring EVERYTHING. It was amazing. I’ve seen a billion pictures but the pictures don’t do it justice. PLUS, the fact that we were in the Sistine Chapel with only 30 people made it even better… for the most part, it was dead silent and everyone was just totally impressed while they absorbed everything in front of their eyes. Even people who had seen the ceiling before said the experience we had with our class was totally different because of the way that the chapel was totally empty and still and quiet. After wandering around and taking pictures (that came out kinda bad because of the no-flash rule) we sat on the steps and listened to a girl give a presentation on the Last Judgement. We were in the chapel for a good hour and a half. HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT. I will never ever again complain about Michelangelo class because our time in the chapel made the entire semester worth it.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 9:00ish and we were starving. After dressing up for a night on the town Brittany, Alyssa, Thomas, Caleb, and I set out to find some place to eat. On the way to a restaurant a car ran over an empty wine bottle and the thing EXPLODED and scared the crap outa me. I was sure that people were shooting at us or something.

Dinner was fun. Random group, but fun. I tried Spaghetti Carbonera (spaghetti with eggs and bacon?) cuz supposedly it’s a Roman specialty… um, yea, it was ok I guess. I think there are better things out there though… By the time we finished dinner it was already 11:00 and we were all dead tired.

After a quick stop at the Spanish steps (to take our “Roman Holiday” pictures) and the Trevie Fountain (to throw our coins in to make a wish) we got gelato at one of the most famous Gelateria in Rome (which I can’t remember the name of right now) and turned in for the night.

I must say… for having only 3 hours of sleep the night before, I had a really great day.