when skies are grey : Day #90 (Field trip to Rome)

May 23, 2013 - Thursday

On Thursday morning we woke up at 5:30 (or at least I woke up at 5:30 because I had to take my laundry out of the washing machine) to go down the funicular at 6:30 and then take a train to Rome at 7! So we arrived in Rome around 8:20 and at the train station we were given our instructions for the day. For four hours in the morning, we were supposed to do some work for class. Each class had a list of places/sites that they needed to see. My class had to write about a few different places while the art class had to draw stuff (not exactly sure what they had to do but it was something like that). So Jenna, Laura, Christabel and I checked into our hostel, which was near the train station, and then set off to find the different churches. First, we went to St. Pietro in Vicoli (St. Peter in Chains), which was the last church that we went to on our last visit to Rome. That time, I didn’t even realize that the church was called that because St. Peter’s chains are on display in the church, I thought we were just there to see Michelangelo’s Moses. So this time I knew what was going on and I spent time looking at both Moses and the chains, and then wrote about Moses for a while. We then moved on to our next stop, which was Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Outside that church was Bernini’s sculpture of an elephant holding up an Egyptian obelisk on it’s back. I tried to write about that one but it was a struggle so I just moved inside the church to see Michelangelo’s Risen Christ sculpture. We spent a good amount of time inside that church and wrote about the sculpture for a while. We passed by Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona on our way to the meeting place, but didn’t have much time to write because we had to meet the rest of the group at 12:30.

After reuniting, the whole group started walking to the Vatican and we had to wait in line forever because there were so many people there! And Prof Doll said it was lunchtime and usually that’s a good time to go to the Vatican. But even then… it was packed and people were pretty aggressive/rude. But anyways, finally made it to the actual entrance, Prof Doll gave us some more directions about what to spend time on and what we should definitely see before he let us loose in the museum. So from around 1:45-6 (closing time), we were in the Vatican Museum! Prof Doll also mentioned that if we knew how far away from the Sistine Chapel we were, we would probably just give up and walk out. Because the signs for the chapel started at the entrance, but we didn’t even reach the Sistine Chapel until 5:30 because there are so many rooms ot go through before then. By that time, I didn’t even know if I was going to make it there because my eyes were about to fall out and my feet were going to fall off from all the walking and looking and writing and picture-taking. Well, I actually didn’t take too many pictures because it was so overwhelming but I did try to take a few pictures in the Sistine Chapel even though there were so many guards there and they were all very strict about where you could stand, where you couldn’t stand, no pictures, no talking, etc.

Anyways, we saw so many cool things in the Vatican Museum but we spent a lot of time in the Modern Art Collection, the Egyptian Museum, the Etruscan Museum, the Pinacoteca (Da Vinci, Rafael, Caravaggio’s Deposition of Christ, etc), Rafael’s School of Athens, and finally the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Finally, it was time to leave the chapel a little before 6, and Laura and I had to walk through four different gift shops to get out of the Vatican. So pretty much she had to drag me out because I had four different chances to look at the same stuff. I made it out without buying anything, but it was difficult because I always get sucked into those things. We hung out outside for a while before we started Laura’s birthday extravaganza of an evening. We made our way to La Fraschetta in Trastevere (where Heather brought me during Easter weekend and where I had my favorite pasta). So I got that pasta again, cacio e pepe, and it was so so so so good. Everyone seemed to enjoy the restaurant too which was a relief because I had totally be talking it up for like two months and that can sometimes be a bad thing. We wandered around Trastevere for a while, went to one of the bridges and hung out there for a while because it was a beautiful night, and then walked to St. Peter’s Basilica. Soon it was time to walk back to our hostel which was by the Roma Termini, the train station. It took us about 45 minutes to walk from St. Peter’s to our hostel which seemed like an okay idea when we started but it was actually exhausting and I was a little grumpy by the end of it. But soon we were settled in bed and didn’t even have to set an alarm for Friday morning!