Bittersweet Ending

Friday we woke up and grabbed some lunch down by Risorgimento, where we catch our bus to school. We went to this fantastic panini place called 200 degrees. It was wonderful, I had turkey for the first time in over a month! We walked around a market for a while down by the river. There were tons of little vendors set up selling all sorts of things. I bought a few more gifts and myself some earrings. It was getting realllyyy hot outside so we headed home for a bit to relax.

The group that went to the market by the water!

We were planning on meeting up with some of the girls teachers at an apertivo place near the Olympic stadium, where we switch buses on our way to school. Well, the bus never showed up so we ended up taking another bus, realized we were going in the wrong direction, hopped off, grabbed a cab to the stadium, realized the restaurant was down the street, walked down the street, ran across a busy road and found the restaurant. Whew. Once we got there we sat with two teachers who were actually married, they're moving to China this fall to teach at an international school there. And Lauren's teacher who is from New York. We sat and chatted for a while and the place was hopping. It seemed to be a popular place for young people. I sound like a grandma when I say that haha. You order a drink for 10 euro then get unlimited appetizers. I had two Bellini's, my new favorite, and ate more nuts and crackers than I thought I could consume.

After we walked with Lauren's teacher to catch the bus back home. Well it was a 20 minute wait so in the mean time we walked over to a wine festival right next to the bus stop. Who knew this 20 minute way to kill time turned into a 3 hour extravanganza! It was such a spur of the moment thing to do and it was so much fun! It cost 20 euro to get in and you got your own wine glass and little wine glass carrying bag to go around your neck. You had 13 tickets to try different wines from 13 booths. This became more like 19 different wines because people weren't taking our tickets haha. We walked from booth to booth attempting to look mature as we sniffed, swirled, sipped, and chugged. I didn't really end up pouring any wine out, I didn't realize you're not always supposed to drink the whole thing. Granted, they weren't full glasses of wine but there was still some there. My favorite was a white wine from a South Africa company. There were some stations with free food so we cleaned those out. Dana ended up buying what we thought was fig marmalade as a gift (the guy didn't speak english so we were trying to figure out what type of food it was made from and that was our first guess). Well turns out it was radishes haha. We didn't get home till about 11 o'clock but it was the best time!

Dana and I sipping our wine and lounging at the outdoor wine festival!

With my wine bag and my first taste! Almost blinking here...

My favorite wine of the night!

Saturday morning we met outside at 8:45 to head over to the Vatican. It was such a nice way to end the program because we'd walked past it everyday on our way to school without ever actually being inside. I felt like we came full circle. It was hard that morning I had to say goodbye to a few of the girls who were leaving. Our group was slowly dwindling down. We walked over to Old Bridge where we met up with Frederica who took us through security and the lines into the Vatican Museum. It was absolutely breathtaking. Everything was gorgeous and gaudy and god-y (bada bing!) I've never seen more religious paintings and statues before in my life! It was really interesting to hear about the Vatican's past. I didn't even know it was it's own country before coming on this trip! It's one of the three neutral countries in the world, who knew? After walking through the museum we ended up in the Sistine Chapel. You weren't allowed to talk, or take pictures, but Frederica talked to us regardless haha. It was incredible to see it in real life. It was also insanely crowded but you definitely take the time to look up and admire the ceiling and all of the walls. After the chapel we headed over to St. Peter's Basilica which is the biggest church in the world. And my goodness was it ever! There were markings on the ground labeling other churches lengths so you could see how other churches fit into the Basilica.

Some of the thousand or so statues in this place!

One of the most famous sculptures at the Vatican

Beautiful ceiling!

Cool 3 dimensional ceiling

One of the Raphael pieces of art in the Raphael rooms. A copy of this painting was actually in our apartment the whole trip and I actually got to see the real thing! I can't remember the name of the painting but I like to call it "Last Supper Pregame".

Another painting by Raphael representing a fire they had

The Pieta by Michaelangelo, its behind bullet proof glass in the Basilica

The bronze canopy above St. Peter's tomb. They actually build the Basilica around the tomb. 

View from the Basilica! I've never seen the square from this angle before!

After walking around we had the option to go up into the Cupola (the top of the dome) for 5 extra euro. MK, Dana, Kaitlyn, Courtney, and myself all made the trek. It was 551 stairs...I repeat 551 stairs. Did I feel like the stair master that day or what! It was the scariest walk of my life. You first had to climb 200 steps that were long and slightly sloped. Piece of cake. You then had to walk across the roof (which had a gift shop) to the next set of stairs. This set of stairs was the rest of the way and you were literally walking in between two walls of the dome. I was too tall and had to tilt my body to fit. You walk along this curved path for what seems like forever. The steps are small and short and steep. It was also insanely hot in there especially when there was a back up of people and we were stuck in traffic. Eventually we made it to the top, and just as I had seen in Florence I saw all of Rome before me. It's a much bigger city but absolutely breathtaking. We even found our apartment while standing on the roof. It was strange, even after living in this city for a month I could barely recognize anything. There were sooo many buildings and so many different places I just could not name. It made me feel especially small in this city and like I didn't have enough time to really get to know it.

View of the inside of the Basilica as we were up in the dome!

View from the Cupola

Rome <3

Dana and I at the top!

We went grabbed some sandwiches from the same shop as the day before, then walked back home. I took a much needed 3 hour nap then woke up and watched the tail end of a movie with Dana, Kara, and Katie. The rest of the group who was still in Rome met up outside and we headed back to our favorite restaurant, the Hosteria Pizzeria with the killer carbonara. This was my third time eating there and Kyle's seventh! They knew us well and brought us an appetizer platter as well as a huge portion of carbonara to share. I ordered the penne with salmone which did not disappoint. After we stopped off at the Dolce Maniera again where I bought another Napoleon. Then we went by Old Bridge and get some more gelato. It made me so sad that this was the last gelato we'd get all together. We were walking home and stopped in St. Peter's Square realizing that would be the last time we all walked through it together. We asked this old man to take the picture and he barely got us all in but got a lot of the Vatican in the background haha. It was one of those mental picture moments and I tried to soak it all in.

St. Peter's square at night

The next morning everyone left but me, Mariel, and Courtney. I woke up early and showered, creeped out by being alone in my apartment. I had to move all my stuff to a bigger apartment in the next section where my mom, her friend Gigi, and I would be staying for the next week. Mariel, Courtney, and I went to see the Pope again. On Sunday's at 12 he pokes his head out of his window and says a little hello and a short prayer in a few languages. I had never seen the square more packed with people. We made our way through the crowd and started our adventure to a market that only occurs on Sunday's that Mariel's teacher told her about. Well, it took us an hour to end up exactly where we started so we ended up grabbing a cab haha. The market wasn't really all it was chalked up to be, it was crowded, and dirty, and there were a tonnn of people. We started heading back the way the cab took us and stopped at this little restaurant to eat. It's always weird on Sunday's because so many places are closed. But it ended up being really good, I had some weird pasta I've never heard of that looked like worms with broccoli and olives yummm. We grabbed a cab back home, because we weren't going to waste another hour, and I relaxed, napped, and watched a movie.

At 7 Mariel and I met up again to grab some dinner. We went back to the place we had our group dinner together on Thursday with all the artichoke. When we walked in, the place was pretty empty except for the people who work there. They were all crowded around the big screen TV in the restaurant watching the Italy vs. Spain soccer game. Well the hostess came over and took our order, then she told the cook who was pissed he had to stop watching the game as it was almost over. We could hear him from the kitchen shouting, "Mamma mia!" Every time something happened with the game. Luckily Italy scored while he was cooking, otherwise we were afraid what was going to happen to our food haha. He brought it out really quickly, probably due to the fact he wanted to watch the game. We had the same artichoke appetizer with the fried potato and cheese as well as assorted bruschetta. It was deliciousss. We also split a bottle of white wine between ourselves. It was really fun sitting there talking and watching some of the game as the staff yelled at the TV.

After we were finished and paid, we heard singing coming from the streets, the staff and us walked out to see a group of people walking down the street. Not just a regular group of people though, there were alter boys, priests, nuns, carabinieri, and a whole slew of other people. We asked the restaurant staff what it was, and they said in english what we call a procession. And they had no idea what for. The chef joked that we could join them if we liked haha. We walked along to Old Bridge where Mariel had her final gelato. While walking over we stopped to take a picture with the Vatican guards who are dressed up in the funniest of clothes. Mariel was trying to wave a car past as we were trying to walk towards the guard, and she waved her hand at them three times and they didn't move, the guard responded, "Senora, Senora...iz red". And we looked to see in fact the light was red and the car couldn't move. Hahaha it was too funny. Regardless, we got our picture and our gelato. We sat in St. Peter's Square for a while just people watching and taking the view then we headed home. We didn't stay up much longer because we were both heading to the airport at 7 the next morning. She had to catch her flight, and I had to catch my mom!