Day 2 of Rome

Day 2:

The second day of Rome wasn’t too terrible really. We woke up early and all met in the lobby to swap stories of the night prior’s escapades as well as head over to the St. Peter’s area to have our “Audience With The Pope” as announced on our official card thingys. Everyone was quite excited, and I was too, despite my lack of Catholic-ness.

We got to St. Peter’s, which was quite a sight to behold with its massive “courtyard” of columns and impressive cathedral. We were there kinda early, so we all headed into the actual seating area and found chairs for us all amongst the hundreds of thousands there. It was pretty exciting as everyone began filling in, getting ready to see a little man dressed in white, talking in lots of languages. Finally he showed up, riding in the back of some fancy Pope-mobile and cruising through the crowds of people, waving to old ladies and trying to hold onto his little hat. It was almost like a game of Where’s Waldo because there were so many people that the only way to spot him was to look for the white spot moving faster than everyone else.

Eventually he got to the front and started welcoming everyone. Because we actually had an official invitation and everything, he said our school by name, Santa Chiara students, and we all half-whooped. Then he talked in Italian for about 30 minutes, which went from interesting to not-so-interesting to bloomin hot. Like the brilliant Aggies we are, we sat in the shade of the mega obelisk in the center of the courtyard. But an hour later, the shadow had moved over to the section that filled up really really fast, for reasons now known. Those sneaky old people… Anyway, the Pope concluded his Italian bit, then said some English bits, then some Spanish, and then I think some German. I’m getting good at identifying the languages at least.

Anyway, he finished and we all clapped and then left to get some grub. We met back up with Paolo later on and actually went inside St. Peter’s, which was fantastic. It’s more of a Renaissance church, but it was still amazing, full of magnificent statues and frescos. Michelangelo’s Pieta is in there, but was a lot smaller than I figured it would be. I took a boondock of pictures, so I’ll show them to everyone later.

We left St. Peter’s after a while, and then we were free until that night, where we had to meet up with the famous Peter Lang to go to some Architecture opening show thing in the middle of nowhere. We all headed to Piazza Popolo, which was pretty cool, and met Petey who took us up, down, backwards, and six directions short of confusing to the middle of nowhere with the art/architecture opening. It turned out to be a bunch of architects museum spaces that they’d designed. It was pretty cool because they showed a lot of the actual models used by the architects, along with the drawings they produce. We were all absolutely beat after the long day though, so a lot of us snuck out for some food, which turned out to be quite the adventure too.

Rachel joined our group that night for some reason, and I’m quite glad she did. We ate at this really fancy place, but it was reasonably priced, so we were all happy. Actually, I think we were just glad to be off our feet for an hour or so. We ate and talked and laughed and had a good time. Then came the fun part.

At 9 pm in Rome, the A line of the Metro closes. Turns out that we were at an A line stop, for Piazza Popolo, and we didn’t finish eating until about 10. So, being the brilliant individuals that we are, we went to the bus stop and figured out how to get back to Termini, the main hub of the Metro where we could find the B line back to the hotel. We all piled onto a bus and headed off to the Termini, or at least we hoped we’d get to the Termini at some point. About 20 minutes in to the ride, we figured something might be not quite right. After drawing imaginary straws, it was decided that Rachel was going to ask someone where we were. She asked and turns out the stop prior was the Termini. So we all jumped off at the next exit and walked for 20 minutes back to the Termini stop.

When we got there, we all didn’t really know where we were. We’ve been to the Termini before and we know what it looks like, but this place didn’t look anything like it. And then the lightning bolt struck and I knew what we’d done wrong. This was the Bus Termini, not the Metro Termini.

Thankfully, there were tons of buses around so we just got the attention of one of the drivers and he kindly pointed us in the direction of the bus we needed. We jumped on that one, which had to drop us off somewhere else in the city, so we could catch a different bus all the way back to where the hotel was. The bus number was 62 and it turned out to be the most fantastic bus to catch anyway. We saw nearly all the major monuments lit up at night, along with tons that we hadn’t seen before, like Trajan’s Column and such. It was quite a ride. Needless to say, we were all happy when the hotel came into view. And I couldn’t have been happier to see my flat-on-the-floor bed.

Thus concluded day 2 of Rome.