We left Friday morning at 6 am, and I was less than my bubbly self to put it nicely. Thank god we had a 3 hour bus ride for me to get some shut eye! There’s about 25 kids in my class, plus my teacher and 2 staff for assistance. We arrived at 10am, and went straight to business.
Before I begin talking about my trip, I need to first explain our tour guide, aka my teacher, Professor Carrera. Although, I’m fairly certain that words cannot adequately describe her. She is about, oh I don’t know, 90? Okay, alright, she’s in her late 60’s AT LEAST. She’s taught so many people’s parents who were in Florence God knows how long ago. She was initially from Puerto Rico and the States, but eventually met a Florentine and has been here ever since. She is a trip. She repeats herself constantly and claims to know everyone’s names by heart (she also teaches the Intro to Florence class, which I am in, so that makes another 80 students, totaling about 100 plus students). In ONE conversation she called me Allie, then Amy, then after I corrected her, she said Oh I know Abby. So….that’s her, in a nutshell. Which seems the appropriate colloquialism since she is A NUT.
But we all love her, you just have to learn to love her. Professor Carrera claimed prior to this trip that she “would kill us!” from all the walking we were to do in Rome. We laughed, being that she’s been around since the antiquity and is like 5 foot nothing. WE WERE WRONG. This trip was more sightseeing and touring than ever thought possible. We saw Rome like no one else. It was amazing, but defiantly an exhausting weekend.
The Arch of Titus
Colosseum, or the Flavian Ampitheater (which is the actual name of the building, the name Colosseum came much later as a nickname, since Flavian built the temple of the colossal statue of Nero, a former emperor who was insane. Hence, the location of the building on the colossal statue made it the "colosseum") there's a little lesson for ya.
So we arrived at 10 am and saw everything to see in Rome till about 6 p.m. The deal with the class going there was that we students would present all the art pieces and monuments/buildings. So before the trip we signed up for 3 pieces to research and then present to the class in front of the work. It was really a great learning experience. Not only did we get much more involved and engaged, it made the day go by faster since the “guide” would change at everything we stopped in front of. Day 1 we packed it in! The Palazzo Massimo museum, the colosseum, the Arch of Titus, the Forum, The Sacred Way, The Borghese museum. By the time 5 rolled around and we were waiting to get inside the Borghese museum we were all laying on the grass outside of pure exhaustion. Until the horrid woman (just kidding) made us go inside. However this was my favorite museum. The Bernini sculptures blew my mind. The way he used the marble to show weight and depth was incredible (don’t I sound cultured!) but really. Google image him and you will get some pretty sweet sculptures. We couldn't take pictures inside the museum so I can’t show any.
The Roman Forum (or what's left)
The Spanish Steps, and my friend McCall (who's a Manhattan beach local!)
The Pantheon (by far one of the coolest buildings I've seen in Europe; 1st c AD, meaning "house of the gods" dedicated to the 7 Planetary Roman gods) NOT to be confused with the paRTHEnon, professor carrera said she'd fail us.
The next day was another jam packed day. We headed to the Vatican city to see the Museum, the Sistine chapel,etc. I really enjoyed being there, but it was a different experience than I expected. With so many people there, I really didn’t feel like I was anywhere holy, let alone where all (well, most of) the Popes lived. It was a little much. However, the Sistine chapel, art-wise was amazing. It was just hard to stay there long without being pushed over by an Asian tourist who JUST had to have the perfect picture of them not smiling in the chapel, though pictures weren’t allowed. But I snuck one on my iPhone :)
Sistine Chapel fresco
St. Peter's Square
We then went to St. Peters, and what seemed like a thousand other churches. The last church was the Church of Gesu, the “mother” of all Jesuit Churches, where St Ignatius lived and studied.We even got a private tour of his quarters next to the church. It was pretty cool, being that I go to Loyola Marymount where our mascot is “Iggy the Lion” after IGnatius..(Iggy, Iganatius, get it?) The church was over the top decorated. Professor said Ignatius prayed in his quarters and then would walk next door to the church and after entering the church he’d lose his faith again and have to go back to his quarters to reflect. Old people humor. It really is amazing though, being in Rome. Everything is so old, and you really feel like you’ve time traveled. After the tour, we,with the little energy we had (and the coffee I refused to go without) headed to see the Colosseum at night. It was so much more stunning without all the crazy tourists everywhere. Plus the way its lit up, all you want to do is stand in front of it and stare. Which is basically what we did. We then met up with some friends who are studying there, but go to Gonzaga, and went to an irish bar...what did you think I was TOO tired to go out? Please. It was a fun night.
Colosseum at night (first: with flash, second: sans flash)
The next morning we toured more churches, yes, there are even more than I thought. We were supposed to go to Ostia Antica, which was the ancient port of Rome for more relics, but with the weather forecast predicting rain we couldn't go since it wouldn’t be safe since its all dirt. This gave us our first day-time free time! We decided to go hear the Pope speak in St. Peter’s square. We waited an hour or so, and finally he came out and gave a speech in Italian. He then addressed all the people in their native language that he knew. He knew a ton, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian (obviously), Dutch, German, English. He wished us a Blessed Sunday and peace and thanked us for coming. It was so cool. With my camera which has aweeeesome zoom I got some pics of the Pope. Pretty cool.
Yep, that's him!
After that we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the hotel and back to Florence. Definitely my most educational trip thus far!
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