Rome Feb. 4 (Wed)

Oh my God I slept horribly. First, I had to sleep with my ipod because people were being so loud. Then I was woken up and kept awake at 2am by what sounded like a water buffalo snoring. Mitch swears the awful noise was from the New Zealand girl in the bunk below him. Hopefully that is true because she and her sister left today. I think next time we take a trip though I should bring my sleeping pills. I’m glad I showered last night, though, the bathrooms got crazy full this morning.
We left the hostel in the morning after locking everything up; I ate an apple and we stopped by a pastelería to get some bread for breakfast. Then we walked to the Vatican Museums, which is actually really ugly on the outside because it is enclosed in a giant ugly wall. We went through security and walked upstairs to buy tickets, only 8 Euro with our International Student ID to get into all the Vatican Museums. I was pretty surprised with security inside; I figured there would be multiple guards in every room. However, I could have walked right up and touched Raphael’s “School of Athens” without any guard in the room! Maybe too many of them were guarding the Pope.
Getting through all the rooms was like a giant maze. We went though the Raphael rooms first, seeing “School of Athens” (AH!!!), “Liberation of St. Peter,” “The Cardinal Virtues,” and others. We had to walk though all kinds of modern art (not my favorite) to finally get to the Sistine Chapel, although we did pass Rodin’s “The Thinker” on the way. The Sistine Chapel is larger than I expected. I walked in and immediately turned around to look at the altar wall and Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” which is my favorite painting of his. It is ginormous, taking up the entire wall (big in itself) from floor to ceiling. It was so cool, and I felt pretty cultured having studied these paintings before. I was able to explain things to my friends that knew nothing about art. And, of course, the most famous “Creation” in the very center of the ceiling, with God reaching out his hand to Adam was amazing. Near the exit we bought postcards and were able to mail them right there; the Vatican has its own post office!
After we left the Vatican I bought a blue Italia scarf; now I just need an España one! We kept walking around the Vatican wall and got to the plaza of St. Peter’s Basilica. The view was large and gorgeous, although it would have been better with out construction going on with the obelisk and the front of St. Peter’s. Entrance was free and the inside was so much more than I ever expected; I should just stop expecting things! Inside on the right, encased in glass, stood Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” my favorite piece of art ever! I was a little sad that I couldn’t get very close, you could only see the front and it would’ve been cool to see the back of the sculpture.
Then we headed back toward the hostel. Italy looks a lot better in the daylight. I think the problem was that we arrived after dark last night and it was rainy. We stopped at a supermarket and bought pasta, sauce, bread, and wine to cook in the hostel for a late dinner. For lunch we had eaten at a Kabob place; I had some fried potatoes and a large spinach filled loaf of bread. After lunch we found a gelato place (cheaper than the one last night!) that I think we will be returning to often! We cooked dinner and hung out with some really nice Australian girls at the hostel. After dinner we went out again for gelato (yes, multiple times each day). We ate while we walked again to St. Peter’s and saw it all lit up at night, gorgeous!