Wow…what a week!
Where to begin?
I started the week after Christmas with grand plans of studying and accomplishing those little tasks that have been nagging at my mind for some time. However, to my great surprise, I accomplished almost nothing and ended up spending the entire week doing the tourist thing! One of the priests in the house from the US, Tony, had a couple of friends visiting from Texas, Colin and Amy, and they invited me almost everywhere they went. Then my friend from high school, Amber, came on Tuesday with three of her friends...needless to say I was more out of the house than in!
The Journey Begins
On Sunday (day after Christmas), after Colin, Amy, and I had made plans to go to the Vatican Museums, we woke up early and prepared to stand the never-ending lines of tourists. When we got there promptly at 7am, it was a ghost-town. There was one couple standing around and they didn’t know anything either so we waited for about an hour until someone drove up and informed us that the museums weren’t going to open; we should have guessed with it being a Sunday and the day after Christmas… Oh well! Fighting the urge to go back to bed, I tried to be a good seminarian and went to Mass at Our Lady of the Angels. The church is built into the ancient baths of Diocletian (emperor) and has a very famous organ: the world’s largest movable pipe organ. After mass they have a 30 minute organ concert so I found a seat in the back and listened to the heavenly sounds made by this mammoth machine. Che Bella! After 30 minutes of bliss, I headed home and actually spent about 30 minutes reading a book for class! J
Fr. Tony, Amy, Colin
On Monday, my new friends and I were taken to the ancient Christian catacombs outside the city walls by our knowledgeable guide: Fr. Tony. The underground passages and graves were interesting, but we were given a tour with a group of high school students so I imagine that it was kind of dumbed-down. And all of the graves had been emptied by grave-robbers which made it a little anti-climactic. On the bright side, the area is exactly what I pictured the countryside of Italy to look like, and we found an amazing little restaurant with a wood-burning oven inside…excellent food!
Oohhh...dark and scary! But no bones :(
Country-side
The next day my friend, Amber from high-school, arrived with three of her friends. They had an extra ticket for the Borghese Museum and offered it to me. After meeting them at what is known as the Central Park of Rome, Villa Borghese, and which belonged to one of the noble families of Rome, we retrieved our tickets and entered the villa which houses a vast array of 15th and 16th century art. The collection was impressive with many sculptures done by the famous Bernini (one small one that was done when he was 10!) and several paintings by Caravaggio and Raphael. Impressive! One of the girls had a Rick Steve’s tour book and that little gem is a treasure trove of information that gave us an excellent tour for none of the cost (she gave it to me when she left, too!). That afternoon we headed up to another set of catacombs in the area, the Catacombs of Priscilla. At first I thought: more catacombs?! Still skeptical, we started out on a “30 minutes” walk that turned into an hour and finally arrived at a little convent run by a group of Benedictine nuns. No tourists or high school groups here! After talking to the nun who had been there 60 years and learning that there had been an Oblate archaeologist that had studied these graves years before, we were lead into another dark, and rather creepy, corridor. This was no emptied out, sterile cemetery: there were still several hundred bodies still left in these graves! At one point the tour guide left us for a moment and, looking down at a shaft of connecting tunnels, I half expected to see a face pop out at me like a horror movie! No such luck though, the guide returned and we continued un-molested by the occupants. On the roof at one point there was a stucco and plaster painting of what is supposed to be the oldest surviving image of Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms, done in the beginning of the third century. Ooohh, ahhh!!
NO FOTO! Inside anyway :(
With everyone out of the city visiting Pompei and Florence, Wednesday and Thursday I curled up in a little ball and slept and read, being exhausted after 6 days of non-stop walking. This is my room in case you’re curious J
Friday
On New Year’s Eve, I met Amber and her friends for a tour of the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, the dug up parts of ancient Rome. Thinking we had bought the tickets for a tour of both attractions, we were somewhat displeased to find that our tour only included the Coliseum :( But the tour was good and we brought our trusty Rick Steve’s Tour Guide to the Forum and wandered around. His tour turned out to be just enough information but not too much! After some long looks at old bricks, we trekked into the downtown area near Piazza Navona and found a quaint little restaurant that was reasonably priced. And since in Italy you can’t miss a day without eating the amazing gelato (ice cream), I brought them to my new favorite gelateria “Quinto Gelato” that Fr. Tony had shown me. This is THE best gelato I’ve had since being here and the new gelato aficionados agreed!
Marina, Catherine, Me, Amber, and Larissa in the Coliseum
Same Day
That night (New Year’s) we headed downtown to a street concert…all of Rome was there! I brought Tony and my new friends, Colin and Amy, Amber and her three friends, one of the guys in my house and his friend from Canada, and my school buddy, a Jesuit named Mike from Boston and his friend Libby. Good crowd! We wandered around for about an hour in insanely crowded streets, trying not to get trampled. Finally we found a tiny bit of space and fought the onrush of moving bodies that tried to invade it. Our strength prevailed and we waited for the New Year to tick around. All of a sudden…CHAOS!! Bottles of champagne popping, being sprayed all over us, and about a solid 20 minutes of so many fireworks that the air was filled with smoke! Here’s a YouTube video one of the girls made that shows the craziness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inJnCwu05Fk&feature=player_detailpage We decided that we should leave the muddy-minded mob and headed for the Trevi fountain. It was relatively un-crowded so we just hung around and watched everyone throw their change in the fountain, hoping for a return trip. A great finish to a great year!
Justina, Me, Catherine, and Marina
More to come soon!!
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