Been travelin'

 

Sorry I have not updated in a long time. I have not been in Torino much the last month. In the middle of the month i spent four nights in Rome and over easter break I spent 8 nights traveling around Sardegna. To be honest, there has not been much time for my studies but as soon as I got back from Easter break, I've been hitting the books hard. 

Oh also, a little warning, my thoughts about all of this are pretty disorganized because sooo much has happened it’s hard to keep it all straight. So forgive me if I get sidetracked.

Anyways... Roma! I don't even know how to put Roma in to words but I'm going to try my best. We got to Roma on Thursday night and checked into our hostel: Alessdrando Palace and Bar. When we got there we were told that all five of us were going to be sharing one room and one bathroom, which was fine with me. The hostel was pretty cheap for Roma so I wasn’t expecting luxury or anything. We were given the key to the room, carried our bags up the stairs, and opened the door to our home for the next five days to find one desk and two twin beds. I instantly thought “Oh perfect, the people at the desk got confused and forgot to give us the key to the other room that must have three beds.” So I returned downstairs to inform the nice Australian receptionist of his mistake. He looks up at me said he would be up to our room in five minutes. I returned upstairs to inform the others that our problem was in the process of being resolved. As soon as I was finished explaining what happened, the energetic Australian come bouncing in our room, went straight to the closest bed and simply lifted up the mattress to convert the normal twin bed to an unstable looking bunk bed. He did the same to the bed then he left again to bring us one more mattress and bed frame because there were five of us. OK…now we are all getting settled in our new home.

That night we went out for dinner (Roma’s kebabs are nothing compared to Torino’s) then back to the bar at the hostel to have a little wine before going to sleep.

The next morning we woke up very early to go to the Coliseum before the crowd. The Coliseum was much more impressive than I thought that it would be They had a special exhibit there all about Nero’s reign over the Roman Empire and burning the city down and what not.

Sidenote: Nero really caught my interest and the rest of the trip I paid extra close attention to any information that I could find about Nero. I remember learning a little about him in my high school Latin class but learning about his life in Rome was so cool for me. As I was walking in the same places he walked I was picking up little tid-bits of information about his life and seeing artifacts from his time and putting all the puzzle pieces together as I explored Rome.

The Coliseum took up the whole morning and after we went to Carl’s “bar” to grab a bite of lunch.

Sidenote: Carl is one of my coworkers from Southern Company.

Lunch was nothing like what I expected it to be. For those who don’t know, a typical bar in Italy is a place with coffee, a few sandwiches, maybe some wine but nothing fancy. However, Carl’s “bar” was a bar but with a real Italian restaurant added on to the bar part. And we were given the VIP treatment. The food was absolutely delicious. It was a real treat to be fed so well because I thought I would be eating mostly kebabs the whole trip.

Some of the food we enjoyed with Carl: Sea bass and potatoes

After our amazing three hour lunch with Carl, we went to the Roman museum:

then on to our hostel for the night as none of us were hungry for dinner. The next day, we walked to Vatican City, stopping at the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, and Piazza Novana on the way. 

It was actually a really long walk to Vatican City and I wish we had taken the metro instead because once we got there we had to walk all over the Vatican Museum and I got really really tired. Here are some of the pictures I took inside the museum: 

 But once I was inside the Sistine Chapel, my energy was some how restored because I was so overwhelmed. I really cannot put into words everything that I thought about the Sistine Chapel. It was the most beautiful and complex art I have ever seen. I was inside the actual Chapel for at least an hour and a half trying to see and understand everything that was painted on the walls and the ceilings. However, I don’t think it was enough time to see everything. I would post a picture but photos were not allowed inside the chapel.

After the Sistine Chapel we made a quick stop in St. Peter’s Basilica:

Outside was set up for the pope to give mass on Palm Sunday, which was the next day.

However, we would not be returning to St. Peter’s for Palm Sunday mass.

Instead, we attended mass in the Coliseum. Carl had told us about this mass service that he had been attending while he was in Rome. It was a very small group of Italians (about 30-40 people) who were allowed to hold mass in a chapel inside the Coliseum each Sunday.

When Carl mentioned it to us, I was pretty hesitant to go. This service would be in Italian of course, so I wouldn’t understand much of what was going on. I’m not Catholic so I wouldn’t even be able to take communion. And I was not sure how well we would be received going to this mass service as tourists. But at the last minute, after thinking about it almost all day, I decided it would be a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity and I would probably regret not going. So we woke up early again on Sunday morning to go to my first ever Catholic mass. We met Carl at his “bar” for coffee then we ventured down to a side entrance to the Coliseum. What I assumed was a guard for the Coliseum came to open the door for all the Italians to enter to the chapel, we crossed the place where all the normal tourists are, stepped over a barrier and followed the Carl to a very small Chapel on the ground floor. There was room for about 15 people inside the chapel and the rest sat in chairs right outside. This was the second time Carl made me feel like a VIP.

Even though I couldn’t understand everything that was going on, I could instantly tell that this mass was much different from an Methodist service I had ever been too. There was a lot more reciting what was printed in the bulletin, there were nuns speaking, and it was much more somber that your typical southern church service.

That afternoon, we went to the Forum – which was kind of boring – I mean once you’ve seen one ruin, the rest look pretty similar. But I wouldn’t suggest skipping the Forum if you are in Rome. 

Our last day in Roma (Monday) we had until 4 in the afternoon to explore, then we had to catch our cab back to the airport. The plan was to go to the Catacombs. To be perfectly honest, I was not even sure what the catacombs were or where they were. But our navigator led us in the right direction. On the way, we stopped to explore the Pantheon – amazing. This is where Raphael’s body was placed when he died (a famous painter from the Renaissance who painted many things in the Vatican). Also Vittorio Emanuel II’s body was place here (the first king of Italy).

So after the Pantheon, we were ready to see these Catacombs. We had to of walked for about two hours to where they were. Once we got to the area, we stopped and had lunch around Circus Maximus. Then, I was looking at the map and discovered that the area we had to go to to reach the Catacombs was not on my map. At this point, I was exhausted from walking so much the past few days, overwhelmed from all that I had seen in Rome, and a little frustrated with our failure to find the Catacombs. So I just gave up on them. I was not that interested in going there in the first place.

Instead I found an awesome place in the park to fall asleep for a few hours and get a nice sunburn. After my nap it was time to return to Torino, and not that I didn’t love Rome, but I was so ready to get back to a place that was familiar to me. I was exhausted from all that we had done and I was starting to get annoyed with the tourists everywhere. It was almost strange to me to walk down the street and understand what people were saying. We saw so much in Rome and it was so overwhelming by the last day that we were there that it was definitely time to return to my "home" in Torino.