"All things are possible to him that believeth" Mk9:23

I'm in St. Peter's Square!

So, after our night full of activity it was finally time to explore Rome!! I had tickets to enter the Vatican Museum at 10 a.m so we headed over to the Vatican together.  I was the only one of the three of us who wanted to go inside we Abby and Jessy dropped me off and we decided on a meeting time much later than I needed.  But we had our phones so I just called them when I was done exploring the Vatican.  But we took our pictures in front of St. Peter's Square and then we parted ways.

So I got in line and shortly realized that I was in the line to get into St. Peter's Basillica.  So I entered and then had to exit and go around the block to the Vatican Museum.  The entrances are different and quite a ways away.  But it's fine because there are plenty of signs.  I rounded the corner and was met with a very very long line.  At first I thought this was the line for me and then I realized that's impossible so I hopped out and went all the way to the front.  Sure enough there was a separate line that was just for people like me with reservations made online.  So I skipped about an hour or more of lines and walked right into the Vatican Museum.  The Vatican Museum is not what you might think, it's quite literally a museum.  There's paintings, tapestries and many other things throughout the whole place.  Different rooms were once rooms of Popes where they signed documents, prayed, and what not.  There are famous works of art all over the place. 

The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament

The School of Athens

I entered and ended up getting the audio guide, because I was alone and figured why not.  But I was thoroughly confused because I wasn't expecting to have to go through many, many rooms to see the Sistine Chapel.  You wind through most of the museum until you eventually hit the chapel.  But it's well worth the winding through.  They have tons of tapestries that depict various maps, Biblical stories, Saints, and many other things.  Then you hit the rooms that Raphael designed and painted in. Those are soooo cool!! What really shocked me is when I was looking at some of these paintings and realized that I had seen some of them before, and studied them in my Art and Politics class freshman year.  For example, when I saw The School of Athens I was like "woooah, awesome!!"  That was really neat to see, then across the wall from The School of Athens was another famous painting The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament.  It was really neat because I was able to look at all the things we talked about in my class and see them in real life.  It was also insane looking at these giant paintings on the wall, and I couldn't even tell that they were painted, they're just on the wall!

I walked around some more and finally got to the Sistine Chapel.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, and while I could because people were I just didn't feel respectful taking pictures when I wasn't supposed to.  So I didn't, but it was really neat.  The Sistine Chapel is actually quite small, not at all huge like you would expect it to be.  I am terrible with giving comparable dimensions, but I can't think of anything that would describe the size accurately.  But if I had to give a comparable space I would say it's about the size of the small gym at MHS.  A bit bigger than that but think that shape.  It's rectangular and not very wide across.  It was magnificent though seeing all the paintings all over the walls and ceiling.  Almost every inch is covered in paintings, and they had chairs all around with head rests set back so you could lean back comfortable and look at the ceiling.  Oh my goodness.  The ceiling is beautiful, every inch is covered just like you'd imagine and it's almost impossible to see everything.  You could see the creation of Adam and Eve, and all the other scenes depicted on the ceiling.  On opposites of the walls up top there were paintings of Jesus' life and Moses' life that complimented each other.  The Last Judgement was also very impressive to look at over the crucifix.  Over all I spent about 20 min just sitting in the Sistine Chapel just looking everywhere and taking it it.  It was so neat to be in there, a bit disappointing that I couldn't document it but still I'm so happy I got to see it.  But I definitely built up the Vatican in my head and thought it would be much more grandiose.  Don't me wrong, it was definitely grandiose, but just not in the ways I was expecting.

St. Peter's Square

After I looked at the Sistine Chapel I exited the Vatican Museum, I looked around a bit more and looked at the other pieces of art, sculptures and things used in masses and such.  But I exited the Vatican Museum after much confusion because there are multiple exits.  Then I headed to St. Peter's Basilica.  I had to walk around the block once again and go through security again, but it was very easy and didn't take very long.  I also got lucky because the lines were shorter around lunch time.  When I exited St. Peter's I looked at the lines and it was ridiculously long.  It only took about 10 min to enter St. Peter's and I walked in and my jaw just dropped.  St. Peter's Basilica is probably one of the most amazing Cathedrals/Basilicas/Churches that I have ever been in.  Spain has some pretty amazing ones, and I love them all in different ways, but this was just simply incredible.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

That was pretty much me the entire time I was inside St. Peter's Basilica.  I was just in shock that I was in there and it was beautiful.  It's HUGE!  Unfortunately I felt a bit rushed because I had to meet up with my friends in about an hour and I was quite stupid and forgot to look at the Pieta.  So you're dumb friend/daughter/person you know (me!) didn't see the Pieta!  I also didn't see people flocking to it so that didn't help me memory.  I did see St. Peter's tomb though!  Because St. Peter's is so big it took a while to see everything.  I think I only explored one side very well and missed a bit other of the other side of the church, which I'm pretty sure is where Michelangelo's Pieta is. :(  But I did see some other rather impressive statues and works of art while I was in there.  I was exploring the multiple smaller chapels that they have all around the Basilica.  I know I have a ton of pictures from being in the Vatican and everything so I'm going to once again just go ahead and put up pictures with captions because that's the simplest way to "tell" you about everything I saw in there.  

St. Peter's Basilica from outside

St. Peter's Tomb

Gorgeous statue I liked

Another gorgeous statue.  I believe this was above someone's tomb

Look at the guard!!

So that's pretty much my experience inside St. Peter's Basilica.  It was really cool and it took be about an hour to walk through it all, after staring for a while, watching a bit of mass that was going on in one of the side chapels and admiring all the architecture.  I finally left and met up with Abby and Jessy at around 2.

Me in front of the Pantheon

Inside the Pantheon

After we met up together we headed over towards the Trevi Fountain.  But we took a long way there and went to the PANTHEON.  Yup, that's right.  I didn't know where we were headed but Abby did, so all of a sudden we walked up to a big building and Abby goes "do you know what this is?" And I was like "of course!! The Pantheon!"  It was actually kind of strange to see it just sitting in the middle of the plaza surrounded by people, fountains, streets, cars.  I mean, you picture the Pantheon in the middle of dirt roads with people wearing togas everywhere.  So it was actually a really weird feeling.  So we took our celebratory pictures in front of the Pantheon and then decided to go inside.  We weren't sure if it was free, but seeing as it's a functioning church it was.  So we just waltzed on into the Pantheon like it was nothing, all the while saying it and getting ourselves excited.  It was awesome.  The inside is really cool, and it's actually almost a little bit strange to see an altar, a cross and Saints all around, because it was originally a temple for pagan worship.  But after you got over that part you looked at the ceiling and saw how perfect it was, just like everyone says.  Then Abby, who's good at natural stuff, looks over at where the sun is on the ceiling and  could tell exactly what part of the day it was.  I'm not good at that stuff, haha, so I just kind of stood there and was like "cool".

After we walked out of the Pantheon we headed over towards Trevi Fountain.  We stopped by this amazing gelato shop and I got some amazing gelato icecream.  Then we kept going on our way to Trevi Fountain.  Also, all around Rome they have fountains for public drinking water.  So there's all these really nice fountains, basically heads, people sculptures, all sorts of stuff spouting water for you to fill up your water bottle, which made it really convenient to keep a water bottle on us all the time and not have to buy water.

We walked down a nice street full of vendors when we got close to Trevi Fountain and by then we could even start to hear it!  As we got closer I said "do you guys hear that?" and all of a sudden we came out of the street and BOOM there was the giant fountain...and tons of people!  The plaza was full of people and they were all eating icecream too.  So we first took a chance to stop and stare and then fought through the crowd towards the front of the fountain to do the traditional throwing of the coin into the fountain.  There's a formula to it though.  You throw one coin if you wish to return quickly, two stars to find love in the city and three coins to get married soon.  So we each stood at the fountain and took each others pictures throwing our one coin into the fountain.  We also learned that over 3000 euro are thrown into the fountain every day.  But they siphon the money out every early morning and donate it to a charity, which is nice.  We hung around a bit longer and then realized that we were exhausted.  We literally hadn't slept in about 30 hours so our legs were starting to quake and we were fatigued (not literally but it felt like I was going to die).  Our feet were killing us and we still hadn't checked in.  So, after deliberating if we should go to the Spanish Steps or back to the hostel we realized the Spanish Steps were in the opposite direction of our hostel, so we opted to head back.  After trekking across Rome, getting slightly lost because of the stupid winding streets and finally made it back to our hostel.  There we got our amazing room to ourselves and just collapsed.  We got dinner down the street, got ourselves fruit for breakfast and were in bed by 10.  We seriously thought it was like midnight when we finally hit the sack, but that was an amazing nights sleep we had.

Overall, our first day in Rome was amazing and I was so excited for our visit to Rome and Colosseum the next day.  But that's for another post.  Until then!  Love you all!