ECII: Uscita lato…destro?

Saturday in Rome dawned bright and beautiful…I have never been so excited about nice weather before in my whole entire life!  (That’s a lie.  I’m always excited about nice weather.)  Still, this was particularly novel after months of London fog, rain and cloud-cover.  Sun! 

Since we had toured the Vatican Museums on Friday, Phil, Mike, Courtney and I were all able to sleep in a bit more than the rest of the ND “pilgrims,” who had an 8am entry time for the Vatican Museum tour.  GROSS!  Instead, we met up at 10am at Cipro, Mike’s Metro stop, to adventure to the top of the cupola (dome) of St. Peter’s!

That's right.  We were going up there.  Yup.

We got there, and the line was massive…wrapped all the way around St. Peter’s Square.  So we did what every self-respecting American college-student/tourist would do…cut in line. Very subtly, very neatly and not drawing any attention to ourselves.  Still, some stinky tour guide took it upon herself to harangue us for cutting the line…after we’d been in line about 10 minutes.  Needless to say I was NOT going to the back of the queue, so I firmly explained that we had been in line just as long as she had…and that she had just missed seeing us because we were on the other side of the (very wide) queue from her.  She shut up and left us alone…haha.  I was proud of myself for sticking to my guns, even if we were sort of kind of maybe in the wrong. 

Anyway, we waited an hour and a half in all to begin the climb up the Cupola.  It was a fun wait in which we talked a lot, caught up, got squished a whole bunch against other pushy-shovy tourists, and discovered the Italian Jay Leno.  Much fun.  We finally started the ascent, which actually freaked me out a bit…you are REALLY high up even when you’re only like…halfway up.  We climbed some annoying spiraly ramp stairs, then came out on the roof of the Basilica which was really cool.  Then we went inside the Dome…Cupola…whatever the technical name is…and had a fantastic birds-eye view of the interior of St. Peter’s…

We were SO high up!

Then it was time to climb inside the actual dome itself.  I was a tiny bit freaking.  A lot, actually.  Thanks Mike, for talking to met he whole time…you kept me sane, buddy :)  The weirdest part was when the walls and stairs started to slant to the side following the curve of the dome…it was so bizarre and felt like something kooky out of Alice in Wonderland, haha!  At any rate, we finally got to the top…and oh, my god…was it ever worth it. 

Yours truly with St. Peter's Square and Rome in the background!

We spent a long time atop the Cupola appreciating the beautiful views of the Vatican and Rome spread out underneath us, then started the trek DOWN the cupola…which was actually harder (I fell.  Boo.)…then we toured the actual Basilica.  SO huge.  SO remarkable.  SO incredibly gorgeous.  We saw Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” which was staggeringly beautiful, and the tombs of many popes, and just the general architecture and atmosphere of the church.  I loved it!  After we finished the interior of the Basilica di San Pietro, we went DOWN into the Papal Tombs, which are under the Basilica itself.  I saw John Paul II’s tomb and words can’t describe.  Not to mention the even cooler experience of seeing the entry to St. Peter’s tomb, which is down in the Scavi even further beneath the Basilica.  It was such a trip walking over the rock upon which the Catholic Church is built…aaaagh. 

the interior of St. Peter's...pretty unbelievable, huh?

Now for my imbecile moment…being the sleep-deprived traveler I was, I elected to give up breakfast for the more important benefit of an extra 20 minutes of sleep.  As we had eaten an early-ish dinner at Mike’s, and as the Cupola/St. Peter’s/Popes’ tombs took a REALLY, REALLY long time, it was approaching 2:30 by the time we even got out of the Vatican.  I was absolutely famished…almost 20 hours without eating is a REALLY poor life choice.  Phil is doing the McDonald’s Challenge (eating Mickey D’s in every country), so we took some lovely public transit (uscita lado…d’estro? is the Italian equivalent of “mind the gap!”) over to the first McDonald’s in Italy, conveniently located near the Spanish Steps, another destination I had to hit.  By the time we had navigated the public transit and absolutely insane lines at McD’s, it was 3:30 and I was getting really hungry, bitchy and insufferable…needless to say, my friends were really happy when I finally had some food in me and was nicer.  :)

After McD’s, we blitzed through the following essential tourist destinations:

1. Spanish Steps: super super crowded, super beautiful, lots of flowers and sun and fountains. 

"Those damn Spanish Steps!" -Grandma Lois 

2. Designer District: I saw a woman wearing the same Valentino ensemble that Valentino was currently displaying in their window.  Then I laughed.

3. Trevi Fountain: We threw our coins in!  One for Roma, two for love.  :)  I hope they both come true!

Fontana di Trevi!  

4. The Pantheon: It’s huge.  And there’s a hole in top.  And it was so crowded we couldn’t even get to the other side.  I still thought it was awesome, though.

The Pantheon!  An architectural miracle!

5. The Circus Maximus: Home to ancient Rome’s foot races and chariot races (I think) and stuff, Mike and Phil had their own spring race.  Phil won, which means Mike gets fed to the lions later.  Kidding…

After all this touristy running around Rome, we booked it to the Roman Forum and Palatine, which is where ancient Roman emperors and politicians lived, played and worshiped.  IT WAS SO COOL.  I was being such a total dork over the awesomeness of the ruins.  One of the emperors, Nero, had a private indoor island, moat and made a 35-foot statue to himself.  The whole imperial house complex was gigantic and made me reconsider my desire to be a French princess at Versailles…or marry into the house of Windsor…maybe I should go back in time and be an empress in the Roman Empire ;) 

Ruins of the Imperial Forum.  Pretty bad-ass!

The big part of the Forum, the old ruined temples, was my favorite.  Mike knew a ton about the ruins and who each temple was dedicated to, and we had a really good time playing in ruins and making generally touristy fools of ourselves. 

The Forum ruins at sunset.  Amazing.

By the time we finished the Forum, we were starving again (surprise, surprise) so Mike took us to Trastevere (what he called “real Rome”) for a great, great 3-hour Italian dinner at Tony’s…yes that is the real name of the restaurant, haha!  I had chicken parmigiana that was seriously the best chicken parm I’ve ever had ever.  Mmmm I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.  After we killed a bottle of the house wine, we also got limoncello on the house…really yum.  I was a fan.  Our waiter recommended a gelato place 30 feet up the road, so we got gelato (another theme of my time in Rome) and walked down to the Tiber Island.

The gang's all here...dinner at Tony's!

 After finishing our gelato on the banks of the Tiber watching the world go by, we headed out to the island itself.  Had some fun exploring the island, accidentally interrupting romantic trysts, and making “Angels and Demons” jokes…the island is the one that Robert Langdon “washed up on” at the end of the book.  I was thinking about my papa bear all weekend :)  We ended up all grabbing some ground on a pretty little hill and just spending an hour talking and talking and talking (and stargazing!  It’s been so long since I’ve seen real stars!)…I can’t even explain how much it felt like coming home to be spending time with some of my favorite people in the world.  We actually talked a ton about all the people back on campus and how much we miss them…so if you’re on campus and you’re reading this, we missed you then and miss you now.  Then we headed back home again, and I passed out in bed sleeping like a BABY.  Early Easter morning awaited us!