Hey team - this past weekend I went to Rome, so I figured I'd write a blog post about it. First of all, Rome as a city is way bigger than Florence, in terms of both size and population. Which on the one hand is cool, because it's a much different experience than being in Florence, but on the other hand makes it difficult to get a good picture of the city in just a few days being there. Even so, all signs so far indicate that Rome is a very cool city, for lack of a better word.
When I woke up at 6:30 am (in Italy I would just write 06.30. It makes more sense really, one doesn't ever need to specify am or pm when the clock is 24 hours.) on Friday to head to the train station, the temperature outside was well below freezing. I could even see my breath inside the bus on my way over. We caught an early bus, so we were in Rome by 10:00. Friday was dedicated to touring the Vatican Museum. It was cool and all, but we really flew through so there wasn't much time to look at things. I know I should have been more in awe, but I just don't know enough about art to get really really excited about this stuff, like some people do. Still, it was pretty sweet to see an original Caravaggio hanging up on the wall, since he's one of the only artists I actually know, and he's pretty badass. We also saw a ton of old statues. Eventually we made it to the Sistine Chapel. Some of the grandeur was definitely taken away by the fact that the floor was packed with tourists, but it is definitely a very different feeling to be standing below the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel than to be looking at it in the pages of a book (side note - I read recently that in the famous ceiling panel where God is reaching out from Heaven and touching Adam, the weird thing that God is sitting on is actually a giant brain. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's pretty sweet if it is, and it definitely makes me like Michelangelo more.). I learned that Michelangelo started painting faster and faster as he worked on the ceiling; he painted his last panel in just two days, which is pretty incredible.
Anyway, that was fun and all, but the highlight of Day 1 was definitely St. Peter's Basilica. It is just awesome. Hard to describe, and really a picture doesn't do it justice, but here's one I found that at least gives you an idea of what the inside looks like:
The ceiling that you see in the foreground is actually high enough to totally encapsulate a 15 story building. But the church is designed to appear more reasonable to humans - the statues set back into the columns are 14 ft tall, while the ones all the way up by the arches are 20 ft tall. This fools your eye into thinking they're not as far away as they actually are, and so your brain doesn't realize how big the space is. The open space in the ceiling you see at the end is the church's cupola (dome), which rises up even higher than the rest of the church. I later walked up there with some friends, but first this picture I took inside the church of a boy standing in a pillar of light:
So we climed all the way up to the top, which is something like 550 stairs. That doesn't sound like very much now that I see it typed out, but it was a long way up. But once you get to the top, you can see pretty much all of Rome, in 360 degrees. This photo shows the square in front of the church - I'm not very up on my Catholic terminology, but it's where the balcony is that Pope comes out to when he talks to people. As you can see, we're pretty high up.
Day 2 was my favorite day. We went on a walking tour of Rome, seeing some of the most famous sights. The weather was bad (the sun would come out, but then without warning it would start absolutely pouring down rain), so I didn't get too many pictures.
Our first stop was il Colosseo. I can't really describe how awesome it is. You see so many pictures and movies of the Colosseum that you get this picture of it in your mind. But when you see it in real life, you realize just how incredibly massive it actually is. It's absolutely amazing to think that something like this was built almost 2000 years ago - it could hold somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people. I was with a really good "tour guide" this day (really just a guy from Syracuse, but he knew a ton about the Colosseum and was really excited about it, so that was great.). He talked about how the Romans could fill or empty the whole structure in about 20 minutes, which is incredible. But he talked most about the actual Gladiator matches. I guess this entry is getting so long that I should save room by not going into specifics, but in a nutshell, the events were absolutely brutal. And surprisingly, the movie
Gladiator actually got most of the details right. It made me want to go back and watch it pretty badly. Here's a picture from the outside of the Colosseum. You can see how big it is compared to the people standing at its base. It's just massive.
Here's a picture of me inside the Colosseum that I had some Spanish girl take (2nd side note - there's so many tourists in Rome that sometimes I would try to pretend to be Italian just to mess with them. Like, if two women came up to me and asked me in English to take their picture, I would answer and speak only in Italian. A few times I even had people come up to me and ask me for directions. Do I really look that Italian?). I was going to upload some other pictures of the inside but again, in the interest of time, I will spare you, the reader.
The next stop on our journey was the Roman Forum, but it basically poured the whole time we were there. One of the characteristics of the Roman Forum is that it has almost literally nowhere to take cover from the rain, which you will discover if you ever go there while it's pouring rain. I don't have many memories from that part of the day, but I'll just tell you all that I went there.
My favorite part of Day 2 (and thus, if you've been keeping track, of the whole trip), was the Pantheon. My understaning is that they still don't know exactly what it was for, but it was some sort of relgious burial place/giant sundial. Or something. The key point to take away though it that it's cool. If you're still reading at this point (congratualions, by the way), you'll note that I've already used the word "cool" to descibe several things. The Pantheon is the most deserving. It was cool cool. Double cool, if you will. Let me try to describe it. First, here's a picture:
There are sixteen columns in front. They are made out of monolithic slaps of Egyptian granite, which is one of the hardest rocks in the world. 2000 years ago, the Romans somehow managed to not only carve out these giant slabs of Egyptian granite, they somehow transported them all the way back to Rome and erected them. I can't imagine how much each of them must weigh.
I don't have pictures of the inside of the Pantheon, but you could surely find some online with just a little poking around. But the inside is even better than the outside. The floor is a perfect circle, 142 ft in diameter. There are all sorts of swell architecture things going on in the interior, but the most obvious is the giant dome which extends up from the walls. The dome is construced from a single, massive piece of concrete. Even with our modern technology this would be extremely difficult to create; the fact that the Romans did it 2000 years ago is incredible. The top of the dome is 142 ft above the floor - the interior of the Pantheon is a perfect sphere. Right at the center is The Oculus (latin for "eye"), a hole through which light shines. Unfortunately, despite raining just minutes before, the weather was sunny again by the time we arrived at the Pantheon. When it does rain, it comes through The Oculus in a perfect cylinder. It collects on the marble floor before gradually draining out through a tiny hole in the middle of the imperceptibly sloping floor.
That's about all, my apologies to all who read this (although to be fair, you probably just looked at the pictures and skipped over the rest).
-Cooper
The view from our hotel room in Alicante. It was a really fancy hotel, four stars or something like that, that Brianna found for dirt cheap somehow. We only stayed there for a night though. Off to the right you can sort of see an old castle on the top of the hill.
On the beach in Alicante.
We found Nic in Ireland.
He and Natalie took us out to an Irish lunch. It was weird having everyone speaking English.
Then we walked out into the countryside, arriving at this old castle on the bank of the river.
Sitting on the edge of said river.
Back in Italy, I took mom to a Fiorentina game her first full day here. She sang all the songs and chanted all the chants. Good mommy.
Then we headed to Cinque Terre.
This is pretty much what it looked like. Tiny streets, colorful houses, dramatic landscape. Plus the people were generally very friendly, much more so than in Florence.
This is a shot from the little bulkhead where we ate lunch.
I got my first Italian haircut in Cinque Terre. Funny story - the barber I went to didn't speak any English, but I noticed he had a Fiorentina scarf/poster combo up above the mirror . So naturally, we started talking about Fiorentina (who he loves), and when he found out I'm from Florence, he called his buddy in from outside. He poured three mugs of beer, and after toasting to Fiorentina we all pounded them. Mind you, this was before he even started cutting my hair.
A shot of me and Brianna
The only of the five villages that's not right on the sea, Corniglia is still quite beautiful.
We were lucky to be able to see the sunset. I tried to take a cool picture, but it obviously didn't turn out very well. Hopefully you can get the idea that it was very nice to look at.
