When in Roma... Do as the Romans Do...

Ciao regazzi,
Could the last few days have been more of a whirlwind? Probably not... I want to tell you about my amazing experience in Rome!

I SAW THE POPE!
... sorry just needed to get that out there!
Here's a picture that my friend Chris took of the pope when we saw him! WOWZERS!! AMAZING RIGHT?

Photo Credit: Chris DeFilippi  

Ok, well maybe I should start from the beginning. I had a flight out of Sevilla on Saturday morning at 7am!... which meant I woke up at 3:45am! Sì, sono stata stanca! I found Sadie at the Rome train station at 1:30pm. She was frantic! So much to achieve in the next few hours! So... Chris got us tickets to Easter Vigil Mass at St. Peter's Basilica for that night (amazing right??). Mass started at 8:30pm, but they started letting people in at 7pm. Chris and Joe got in line at 3pm! Sadie, frantic when she met me, told me that we would only have the next two hours to get into the Vatican Museums to see the Sistine Chapel, but our apartment that we rented for the weekend was far away, and we had a huge debate about what to do with my bags in order to get to the Vatican Museums before it closed at 4pm for Easter. Well, we ran, and rushed, and sprinted until we had no breath left... We got to the Vatican Museums at 4:02pm and it was closed! :( Our hearts broke. We tried SO hard! Well... this was the opportunity cost associated with coming to Rome for Easter and seeing the Pope. At 4:02pm, starving, bummed, and tired, we headed back to a gelato shop that we had ran past, which happened to be considered one of the best gelato shops in Rome. Epic? YES! Amazing? YES! Delicious? YES! Dear Old Bridge Gelato, thank you for giving me the greatest gift of all, your amazing gelato! My gelato worker was a beautiful flirty Italian guy, who gave me a delicious cone of stracciatella, cookies, and nutella flavors gelato. YUMM YUMM! After we gobbled that up, we realized that Easter... Sunday... Rome... = food stores, restaurants, etc = closed! We frantically found a supermarket to stock-up on some lunch food for the next day, when we were to conquer Rome. We gobbled down Margherita pizza at a tourist restaurant near the Vatican, since of course we were still starving, even after 3 scoops of gelato. Then again, even if we weren't starving, who could turn down pizza in Italy? 

After pizza, Sadie and I found Joe and Chris in the very VERY very long line that had wrapped around the Vatican square. Languages from all over the world were being spoken around us. Everyone was forced into this same line, which had been started since hours before we had gotten there. Priests and nuns were in squished in the same line as us; we were all anxiously waiting to get into the Basilica. Remember that time when I told you that wherever I travel to the rain seems to follow me? Yes, as we waiting in line, it started to pour! I don't mean drizzle, or rain, or rain hard. I mean, it downpoured. Initially it was just raining, and everyone put their umbrellas up, and it made for a sort of overarching cover for everyone. It was actually quite cool.

 While we waited in line, people would chant and sing, kind of as if we were at a soccer or football game. I know that there were some in line that felt that the chanting was disrespectful and were not pleased. Understandingly. But if we hadn’t been standing outside of the Vatican to wait for mass, it would have been perfect. Because everyone was gearing up for a stampede. First ones into the Basilica got the best seats and the best views. Plus, we heard that they gave out 3x as many tickets as seats, so no one wanted to get stuck standing for the three hour mass with a horrible view. In any case, just around 7pm, when they started letting everyone in, it downpoured x1,000. We were drenched. The rain drenched us, umbrellas pouring their water directly on us drenched us. We were wet, cold, and anxious to finally just get inside! Security was letting very small groups in at a time, so it took a very long time to finally get through. Right before we got let in, I am not really sure what happened, but either someone got trampled, or someone snuck through security, but something very scary happened because we heard a lot of screaming and were pushed ferociously hard. It was actually really scary. 
We finally pushed our way through! We got to security and Sadie yells and tells me that she lost her ticket in that mess of a crowd when we got pushed! Oh that poor girl, my heart broke. I seriously thought there was no way she was going to get in! After not getting to see the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, and not getting in to see the pope, this trip would have gone so sour in 5 hours! Heart breaking every beating second. At each step of security, they kept asking to see tickets; so even though, the first nice man waved her through, she kept getting stopped at the next ticket stop. Heart still breaking. Still breaking. We got to one ticket stop and the guy tells us there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO GET IN WITHOUT A TICKET. WE ARE PLEADING. IM YELLING AND SCREAMING: “LOOK HERE’S MY TICKET. HERE’S GOT LOST IN THE CROWD.” He keeps saying you must wait on the side, there’s no way you are getting in. Poor Sadie. She starts crying, my heart is breaking. We pleaded and waited and pleaded. The security man saw Sadie crying and waived us through, OH THAT MAN IS A MENCH! Bless his heart!

WE MADE IT IN! Sadie sidestepped the last ticket check, and we found the boys and got pretty good seats. Not on the aisle, like they were trying, but not so far back. At the entrance, we were given a candle, and a prayer book. What an amazing experience this was about to be! First let me say, St. Peter’s Basilica is the most beautiful building I have ever been in. It’s so decorative, and yet it’s not overwhelmingly so. It’s just so beautiful. I love the gold, but it’s not too much. Joe said that it has a lot of Baroque details in it. 

Joe had already seen the pope 3 times this week! He had went to mass with pope the previous days! ... very dedicated! So this didn't seem like that big of a deal to him, but to Sadie and I... we were freaking out! How often do you get to see the pope! Joe is very knowledgable about Rome, Catholicism, and Italy in general. He is fluent in Italian and recently became an dual-Italian citizen! He taught me a lot about Catholicism as we were waiting for the mass to start. What is really cool about the Easter Vigil service is that it starts in darkness, because its during the time that Christ is dead, and then everyone's candles are lit to bring light into the room. This sounds very beautiful; during the service, it wasn't quite executed as such. It started in darkness, as the pope walked in, but everyone was flashing their cameras that it distracted the mood away from this symbolic element of the service. Also, they turned the lights of the Basilica on before all of our candles had gotten lit, which was a bit disappointing. The service itself was extremely interesting and really moving. It had readings and songs in several different languages, in order to appeal to all the different nationalities in the room. There was Spanish, Italian, Latin, and English readings. I thought that was really beautiful. The service was very long, longer than a usual Easter Vigil Mass, according to Joe, who said this service had a lot of fancy add-ins (which makes sense... it was mass with the pope!). Everyone stood whenever the pope spoke. His homily, what I gather was like a sermon, was in Italian, but Joe understood it and what he summarized to me was a beautiful message about openness and being receptive to change. I felt very inspired and moved by the tunes sung in the service. The song, Alleluia, tune and words sounded fairly similar to the hallelujah song I am familiar with from the Jewish tradition. Overall, the service was very nice and it was an amazing experience, to be exposed to and to learn about another faith and to have had the opportunity to see the Pope! There were some Argentinians in the row in front of us; when the pope exited the mass, everyone was standing and trying to take pictures. They yelled and screamed and showed their Argentinian flag, and he loved it and engaged with them! I know that there are lots of conversations about "the good, the bad, and the ugly" about his past, but it seems as if he's going to take the Catholic Church in a good different direction. What an amazing it experience that night was. We exited the Basilica and the Vatican was beautifully lit! How beautiful! Well, what an amazing day. The next day would be the day we would conquer Rome! 

On Sunday morning, Sadie and I woke up early (thanks to daylight savings, we also lost an hour of sleep) to conquer Rome. We kept saying to each other, Rome wasn't built in a day, but it was conquered in one by us. Sadie knows that I don't half-ass my travel; I wasn't going to let us leave without having seen everything. And in our case, see everything twice, since we went back everywhere at night too. LOL. We started at the Colosseum, then the Roman Forum. We didn't go inside either because we were pressed for time and the lines were long. Joe and Chris were making us an Easter dinner around 4pm, so we had to be back at the apartment fairly early. On our way to find the Pantheon, we stumbled upon a bakery that was open (WOO!.. I was so nervous everything was going to be closed!). Since being in Italy, I hadn't had a cannoli yet and it was breaking my heart that I might leave Italy without having one. Cannolis are really a southern Italy thing, and I didn't have any plans to be in southern Italy during my time. The woman stuffed the cannolis right there in front of us, filling my cannolis with chocolate chip cannoli cream and then adding more chocolate chips on the sides as well! BOY WAS I EXCITED! Sadie got one chocolate chip one and one chocolate one. Yummy yummy! 


We got to Piazza Navona, which is a beautiful square. There were paintings being sold everywhere in the square, which gave the square an artsy feel. The fountain in the middle, the Fountain of the Four Rivers, was beautiful, which is a masterpiece of Bernini. Each statue represented a major river on four continents. After Piazza Navona, we made it to the Pantheon. There was a mass being held in the Pantheon when we got there, so no visitors were being let in. We made it there in good time, because only five minutes later, the mass ended and they started letting us visitors in. We were in the front of the line, so we got into the Pantheon before a massive crowd filled it. BEAUTIFUL! After the pantheon, we headed to the Trevi Fountain and did out best to get our perfect pictures with the Trevi. Of course, we were hurried by the millions of other tourists trying to get their perfect pictures too. After the Trevi, we went to the Spanish steps, where we sat on the beautiful, white steps for lunch. We had packed our lunch, fearing nothing would be open, but turns out that a lot of the tourist restaurants were open. After lunch, we walked to Piazza del Popolo, our final destination. We saw an overlook above Piazza del Popolo. We went up there, and saw a beautiful view of Rome. At this point, it was nearing 3pm, and our feet were starting to really hurt after walking around Rome all day. We did it; we saw everything that we had wanted to that day! 
Rome was surprisingly very walkable; once you get to one major site, it is very easy to walk to all of the rest. The public transportation system in Rome is horrendous. There are two metro lines- expansion is nearly impossible because all of the historic landmarks get in the way. The bus system is horrible- buses in general are just really unreliable. In general, the buses and metros that I was in were really dirty, like it really isn't clean or well-kept. The city itself is beautiful, its well-lit and there are beautiful buildings everywhere, but outside of the tourist areas, it's really not very clean or well-kept. We headed back to our apartment which took a long time, because we had to take the metro, switch lines half way, then take a bus to our apartment. Took maybe 30-40 minutes I guess. Except for waiting for the bus, which could last anywhere from a minute to an hour! We were greeted at our apartment with a wonderful dinner prepared by Joe. Joe's friend studying in Rome joined us for dinner, which was very nice! She had seen the Pope that morning when he rode around in the "pope-mobile" around Vatican Square. After some delicious dinner and dessert, Sadie and I, joined by Joe's friend, headed out to conquer Rome again, but at night. 
We started at Old Bridge Gelato by the Vatican. We couldn't leave Rome without seeing if our favorite gelato place was open. It was! Yum yumm and the cute gelato guy took my order again :) After seeing the Vatican again for one last time, we walked to Castel Sant'Angelo and across the Tiber River. The Castle was beautifully lit that night. The rest of our stops were short walks from each other. Again, we walked to Piazza Navona, and then to Pantheon, and then ended at the Trevi Fountain. Going to the Trevi at night was one of my main goals for Rome. I had never been there at night. BOY IS IT MAGICAL AT NIGHT. Beautifully lit! I threw my coins and made my wished and we got lots and lots of pictures! Sadie and I parted ways with Joe's friend afterwards; Sadie and I ended the day with seeing the colosseum (AMAZING!) and rushed on the metro to make it to our stop before the metro closed. We had to wait a good 45 minutes for our bus to the apartment. We were so happy to make it home- what a long and tiring day! Who knew we could conquer Rome twice in one day? Well, what an amazing end to the day; what an amazing end to spring break. 
We left for Milano early the next morning (and sadly left our last cannoli there!). I was so thankful to get home, to be in my own bed, and to have a break from being on the go 24-7. I got home, and was greeted by Alessandra and lots of her friends, who were putting together a Pasquetta party in the apartment. In Italy, the Monday after Easter is a holiday; many people go on picnics or have gatherings with friends. The party went all afternoon and evening. It was quite an event. 
Well, that concludes my summary of my spring break. Pretty awesome, huh? It was an amazing 11 days, a whirlwind cultural experience, and a fantastic time with friends exploring new cities. Once again, came and conquered and left my mark! 
What's up for the next few weeks? Well, IES has a trip planned for us to go to Parma and see how parmesan cheese is made and then the following weekend I am going to Dublin with Sadie and Chris. So lots more coming up. But for now, it's back to semi-real-life of school work and editing photos and living my amazing life in Europe :)
Ciao amici,
~E