"Rome" if you want to...

Happy Easter! Hope everyone enjoyed the holiday! I was extremely happy to be studying abroad this weekend as Syracuse/ESF no longer gives Good Friday off, not cool. Meanwhile, I had Friday and Monday off this past weekend.

What did I do with all this time? Roma, Italia!!! 

On Thursday morning, my friends and I got on a 6am flight to Rome. It sounds early especially since we had to get up at 2am to have time to get to the airport but Katie, Callan and myself have gotten into the habit of just passing out on the bus, plane, train, you name it. I used to get anxious about flying, now it's like nbd (no big deal). 

When we arrived in Rome we took a bus to our hostel. It was still to early to check in so we dropped our bags and left to explore the city. 

The first thing we found was an amazing pizzeria for lunch; side note, we ate nothing but pizza, pasta, wine and gelato while in Italy. 

After that we wandered around Rome. We visited the Trevi Fountain then walked across the Tiber river and explored the Trastevere area.

Trevi Fountain

For this trip we decided to use a tour group as Easter in Rome would be insane. They say 2 million people were in the city for the weekend! Our tour guide was Andy Steves, Rick Steves's son. Rick Steves is a famous tour guide writer, I think he might have  a TV show too. The tour was with Weekend Student Adventures which takes students (mostly study abroad) on trips to popular destinations. It was really great because we got to skip all the lines for the museums plus we got tickets to Easter Mass at the Vatican. We also met lots of other students who were traveling. Our hostel roommates were 3 girls who were studying in Ireland as well and all from New York, crazy. 

On Friday we joined our group in visiting the Colosseum, the Roman forum, and the Pantheon. In the afternoon we were given some free time. During free time I did some souvenir shopping and visited the museum of Italy where there is a view point at the top of the building that looks over the skyline. 

The most incredible thing about Rome is that it is covered in ancient ruins. The place just wreaks of history. I can't even imagine how they built all this stuff without modern technology, plus most of the stone they used came from Egypt. Rome was also the first city ever to reach a population of 1 million, the infrastructure and services needed to support that many people blows my mind.

Colosseum

A piece of the Roman Forum

Saturday, we did the "Pope's Rome" including a tour of the Vatican museum, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. The art and architecture in these places was amazing. Michelangelo and Raphael were some of the highlights. We also got to see everything set up before the big event on Sunday. That night we had a 7 course italian meal compliments of the tour....unlimited wine included. 

Not to mention we had gelato everyday that we were there. My stomach was dying.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

Easter Sunday....I have no words, it was so incredible and wow. Over 100,000 people attended mass. We had to get up at 5am in order to make it to the Vatican by 7am so we could get good seats. People were shoving and running to get seats. We ended up in the sixth row, right in the front. 

I'm not Catholic and the service was in Italian so needless to say I was lost for most of the 2 hours. At home for holidays I usually go to Harrisena but we definitely don't stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, kneel, sit. And Rev doesn't sing the scripture. Basically everything I know about Catholicism is what I've learned from the movie Sister Act....I know lame. It was still really cool. 

AND the Pope was pretty sweet. He is so old. So so old. At the end he said Happy Easter in 65 differently languages, impressive, but still very old.

Pope Benedict XVI

+100,000 People

One strange thing that happened was a plane flew over head really low during the service which sort of freaked us out. When we got back and talked about it to our Australian friends they suggested that 9/11 probably has had more of an impact on us then we realize. Makes you think. 

After the 2 and a half hour service we had a nice lunch, visited the Trevi Fountain again and then soaked up some sun on the Spanish Steps. By 4pm it was time to figure out how to get back to the airport for our 9/10pm flight. We were so exhausted. We got back to Dublin at 1am-ish. Going through Irish customs was a joke, the guy asked us if we were students and then he just let us in, no passport, id or anything. A testament to how laid back the Irish are.

I tend to compare a lot of the places I've been with movies, for Rome it was the Lizzie McGuire Movie.  I used to watch this on Disney Channel all the time when I was younger and it's actually very accurate.
Try and find some of the sites I visited in this clip from the movie!

Monday, I slept in till noon then headed downstairs for lunch. Eddie and Kay (the husband and wife chefs who run our dinning hall) welcomed us back with huge cadbury chocolate eggs. The dinning hall was also decorated for Easter. Needless to say we love Eddie and Kay, basically the Mom and Dad of the Roebuck Castle kids. 

Not much is going on this week, I have to get working on papers and projects so that's what I'll be up too. This week also marks the 100th anniversary of the Titanic on April 15. Titanic has a lot of significance to Ireland as it was built in Belfast and it's final port before going to America was in Cobh. A lot of the third class passengers were also Irish immigrants. So watch the movie this week! 

Slainte!