23 November Saturday
We woke up at 6:40 this morning, and we headed out to the Metro heading to the famous Spanish Steps. This city is so dirty!! Look at the lovely stairwell down into the Metro...so crazy. We were sooo tired. Our clothes weren't dry yet from yesterday. And it was STILL RAINING!!!!
So these are the famous Spanish Steps....Piazza di Spagna. They rise 137 steep steps from a fountain at the bottom at the piazza at the bottom up to the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. This is the widest staircase in Europe! Sadly, the fountain was covered up/closed because of winter coming. And the church wasn't open as early as we were there hahah.
But, the view was amazing!
Still kinda confused about the appearance of palm trees here.....
There was some human poop on the stairs....hahahahahaahahaaaaaaaa
We went back down the stairs to the Metro and headed over to the VATICAN CITY.
And we got McDonald's for breakfast on the way....hahah
The sky cleared up!!! SO BLUE!!!
Psyche it was still STORMY....so crazy.
So our first stop in the Vatican City was St. Peter's Basilica. It is one of the largest churches in the world. It is arguably "the greatest of all churches of Christendom". The basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter. The building is simply amazing. The square in front is hugged by these colonnades made by Bernini. At the center of the piazza is a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian obelisk 25 meters tall. Bernini also constructed the fountain inside the piazza.
We had to wait in a line for 20-ish minutes in the rain to get through security in order to get into the basilica.
When you enter the building and turn to the right, this is what you see:
Yeah, a bunch of people gathered around this sculpture taking photos.
This is not just any sculpture. This is Michelangelo's Pieta. JUST LOOK AT IT....the photos do no justice....this is one of the most beautiful, mind-blowing pieces of art I have seen in my life. I stared at it for a long, long time. This is the only sculpture Michelangelo signed, because (a story is told that) people were talking about how some other artist created this beautiful sculpture, and he was so angry that people didn't know he was the sculptor that he signed his name on Mary's sash. He regretted this, and decided to never sign another sculpture again, which he didn't.
So everything in this church is GIANT. Those black letters up above in the gold? Each letter is over five and a half feet tall. Being in there I couldn't even believe that!! It was just HUGE!
This structure in the middle was created by Bernini...a very interesting piece of art. Kinda confusing....built with bronze. It is a "baldachin"...a bronze canopy. It is over the alter. St. Peter's tomb is supposedly underneath this altar, and so the canopy marks his tomb underneath. It is 20 meters tall.
That's me in there!! hahahah
We headed over to the Vatican Museums...namely the Sistine Chapel which is included. It was confusing...this all didn't make much sense until we got there. In order to get to the Sistine Chapel, you had to go through a bunch of rooms where museums have been set up. There were rooms covered in frescoes, namely Raphael's fresco rooms. Everything was incredible, and honestly really overwhelming. It took us almost two hours to get through the whole thing....if I had stopped and looked at everything, that could have taken me up to 6 hours to get through. Someday...haha. Taking pictures was kinda useless...basically everything was just covered with art. Every single inch (definition of Rococo art style).
One of Raphael's fresco rooms
sneaky, sneaky iPhone photo of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
picking up our checked bags...
We headed back into the other side of Rome where we met up with Tanner....he didn't want to come to the Vatican stuff with us at all (whhhhhat, right???), so he went and spent the entire time in the Roman Forum. He loved that.
We met at this white building, which I was assuming the whole time was a parliament building or something, but we learned about it in art history this week and it is just a MONUMENT! That's all!! No purpose in this building! Yeah it has rooms, which hold some exhibitions now, but nooooo. Just a monument. Wow. The monument is to an old Italian king from way back when...Victor Emanuel II (Vittorio Emanuele II). It is beautiful!!!! So white! We climbed up some stairs and found an awesome balcony looking out over Rome. It was incredible!
ruins just everywhere... - iPhone panorama -
these guards are holding GUNS pointed out... hahaha
Piazza Venezia
not really a fan of all the seagulls...
we popped into a church at the top of the balcony
found this old biulding that looked like a mini-Colossuem
We walked down a few blocks and found a suitable place for lunch for some quick hot food. Tanner was SOAKED! He didn't have an umbrella!!!! He was outside for like 4 hours!! He didn't smell too great either. And Amy was dead tired. While we were eating we heard a bunch of people outside and heard some drums...? We stepped outside and saw a line of people protesting...I don't really know what is going on here but they weren't happy.
Tanner's hands were so cold that he held my plate the entire time I was eating. And then he found his train ticket, which was also soaked.
We continued on our exploration of the city, looking for this certain piazza where we read there would be a market. It wasn't too far away. But, when we got there, the market was all messed up! I don't know if it was from the bad weather, or if the protestors had come through here and caused a problem, or if Italians really are just that messy.
We went to a little shop and looked at cute things, and then we got gelato again (stracciatella-my favorite- and hazelnut this time), then we walked through the horrible rain that started through even more shops...and we ended up all at the Trevi Fountain together.
cool old things everywhere we go
It was just after 6...but our train didn't leave till 7:15, but we decided to head to the train station anyways. We stopped at a Spar grocery store to get some little things to eat for dinner (late lunch...so I just got a roll). We got on that train as soon as we could, which was right when we got to the station! We claimed one room for all of us, because Katie had the one reserved seat so that means anybody can sit in the other seats, so we just made that our group. Klint had his own seat far away, Tanner had his own seat a couple rooms down. Eventually, Lexi, Caelyn, and Amy would go to the back to their "couchette" seats....pretty much bunk beds (not comfy though). These tickets were cheaper for some reason. This is all really complicated. We were just trying to work the system so that we could all lay down, basically.
All our clothes were so wet! So we spread them out everywhere. I don't know if you can tell from these pictures...but all the luggage racks above us had our clothes hanging all over them.
Katie, Garrison and I tried to claim our own room, so every time there was a stop to pick up more people, we acted like we were sleeping so nobody would bother us. This one creepy guy kept coming to our window though! He even opened our door, but didn't say anything! I peeked and he had half of his body inside our door, and I suddenly got scared that he was evaluating all our things hanging everywhere and how easy they would be to snatch, so when he left I shut the door, and we sat up and decided we should let Tanner join us so that we would look more full, but still be with people we knew so it wouldn't be awkward to sleep next to each other, and we wouldn't have to worry about our things. So we got Tanner, which was good because his room had just gotten really full so he couldn't lie down in there anymore.
So, the four of us were going to be so comfortable! But then some lady came in who had a reserved seat for that stop! We didn't think about that. So we had to make room for her....so it ended up being FIVE of us in there...the lady stayed sitting, and Katie sat across one seat kinda....Tanner, Garrison and I shared the width of two bed things...it was not great, but we all slept alright I think.
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