Day 3 - Rome

I totally forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day today. But that’s not really important anyway, so…there was really no point in mentioning it. Praise its uselessness! Praise it I say!

We got up around five thirty or so this morning and, thanks to jet lag, just as Vig had promised we were all quite awake. Then we took a bus and pranced off to a place where Carlo wasn’t technically supposed to let us off, but he did anyway so we had to move quickly. And then there was an issue with our water bottles since we were going to the Vatican museum and they wouldn’t let us take water inside. So Sarah put ours back on the bus and that, m’dears, is the last time I ever saw my dear water bottle. All well, I got others later.

Behold the statues above the arch we were waiting alongside! The door we actually entered through wasn't nearly as interesting as this. :P Click here for all of my pictures of the Vatican Museum. And some of St. Peter's Basilica. xD

We had to get there early to stand in line with the other groups waiting to get in or we’d lose our spot and then have to go and wait in the big huge line with all the non-group people. Only much later in the day when we were leaving did we realize how significant that was. The line we saw then stretched on and wound around so much that I had no idea which way it was going. Anyway, we went into the museum and it turns out that, no, I didn’t need my work shoes or slacks like I had thought originally. I just wore jeans and tennis shoes and got in just fine, but that may be because it was the museum and not some other part of the Vatican. Well, we had to wear these little radios around our necks and put the little plastic ear pieces in one of our ears so we could hear the tour guide. I don’t think it was Vig at first, but I do think he took over later. Dunno, my memories of today are pretty hazy. We just did way too much. I’m surprised I remember anything at all.


See? I told you the door we went through wasn't that pretty. And yet I took a picture of it anyway...

The ear piece made the inside of my ear itch like crazy and I had to hook the little radio onto my jacket and then my purse when I had to take my jacket off when I got too hot. This did not bode well since I kept knocking it off whenever I moved to take a picture of something. It also didn’t help that I had to hold my jacket in one arm because that made it insanely difficult to take any clear pictures on the first try.

The only things that I really remember were the ceilings and one picture of Jesus in particular. The ceilings in some of these halls…there was just so much detail! I guess you could call it busy but, really, they were gorgeous. Heh, I loved the ceilings far more than any of the paintings, statues, and tapestries we saw that day. They were, for lack of a better word, amazing. The painting that I recall depicted Jesus coming out of the tomb. Normally, that wouldn’t be that significant, but it was done with the same effect that the Mona Lisa has. As in, the subject is looking out at you and, no matter where you move, his eyes look like they’re following you. It’s kind of creepy and, yes, I do have a picture of it that depicts the effect pretty well. It’s so weird to actually be there with this huge Jesus watching you. I’m tempted to use the word profound to describe it, so I will.

The view outside one of the windows.

We went into the Sistine Chapel after going through the museum, but Vig had to get special permission to talk in there since he was a tour guide and didn’t have to talk very loudly since we all had the radios to listen through. I don’t know why but I always figured that the Sistine Chapel was a lot…smaller. I mean the room in general, I just didn’t expect it to be so incredibly large. I’ve seen a lot of the paintings in there before, back in high school in Mr. Crawford’s humanities class, so I felt pretty accomplished knowing that I was seeing the real things. Obviously, you’re not allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I had to look up the ones I have on Google. None of them really do it justice, though. There’s just too much to see all around you and it’s all too beautiful to be captured adequately in a mere picture.

They should really have places where you can lay down or something so you can look at the ceiling for extended periods of time because my neck was killing me after only a few minutes and I hadn’t seen nearly enough to stop looking. Just like with the ceilings in the museum, there’s an incredible amount of detail. Not just on the ceiling either, but the walls as well. On that note, it’s amazing how well everything’s been restored. There are still a few spots that they left untouched to show you just how bad it all looked before getting restored. You can barely see anything at all, it’s so dark! But, back to the detail. You’d be amazed at all the tiny, random little things Michelangelo painted to fill in all the gaps and blank spaces. I was thoroughly impressed by the philosophers and the sibyls. The niches that they’re sitting in look so real, it really makes you question if it can possibly be just a painting you’re looking at. This trick, I came to realize later, was extremely popular, especially when it came to the insides of cathedrals and depicting the lives of saints. They look so much like rooms you could just walk into or, at the very least, the columns and little decorations framing the frescoes look like carvings.

There’s no way I could possibly describe everything in the Sistine Chapel. There’s way too much and it’s nothing like actually being there and experiencing that sharp pain in your neck from looking up too much—okay, I don’t really recommend that last part, but it can’t be helped.

We all kept getting shushed because, no matter the rules, someone is always going to be whispering somewhere in the Chapel and when a couple hundred people are doing that it starts sounding like a mild roar. So, every now and again a priest would go up on the altar at the front and we’d all hear a shockingly loud “SHHH!!!” It carries a good distance, I gotta say.

After that I think we went down to see the tombs of the various different popes, where we, of course, weren’t allowed to take pictures. The little details on those carvings are unbelievable, though. Once again a “pictures don’t do it justice” sort of thing. It’s not like there was anything particularly large, colorful, or fantastically beautiful, it’s just all those tiny little locks of hair, folds in the clothing, wrinkles on their faces, and every other meticulous detail you could ever think of. The amount of work that went into all the stonework is baffling really.

We moved on to St. Peter’s Basilica where Vig told us to get pictures of the Swiss guards. Now, how I missed them I don’t know, but I guess I didn’t bother to look around even the tiniest bit because if I had, believe me, I would’ve seen them. I saw them after I came back out of the basilica but there was no time to get a picture then since we were moving on. So, yeah, I had to look up pictures of them online. I kind of feel sorry for them, though. I just…who the hell came up with those uniforms? Well, it certainly makes them a sight to behold. It’s no wonder everyone wants to get pictures of them.



My batteries ran out in the basilica, but Sarah lent me some so I could continue taking pictures. Once again I must comment on the sheer amount of detail put into everything. Also, it’s huge. No, huge is the wrong word. Hugemongous makes it sound silly. Enormous. Yes, that sounds about right. Absolutely enormous. The sculptures up near the ceiling didn’t look that large from so far away but one of them, I was told, was holding a little cross in her hand. From that distance, it didn’t seem very big at all, but the cross was actually a good deal taller than any of us. Sadly, I don’t think I got a picture of that, but if I had you only might be able to understand how gigantic that sculpture would have to be.

I kept losing the group, which got pretty frustrating. The ear piece for the radio wasn’t making the situation any better. It just kept itching like crazy. Basically, I just stopped paying attention to what Vig was saying and kept taking pictures. Flash doesn’t work in St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s just too big and flashes only travel about fourteen feet or so, thus making them entirely useless. I tried using it a few times for things that were closer, but even that proved pretty useless. This made things extremely difficult since, without a flash, my pictures tend to come out pretty blurry. Really, it’s that way with most digital cameras, but this place was swarming with people so, not only was I getting bumped into a lot, but I also had to hold the camera up above everyone’s heads. Thus, it was pretty hard to hold the camera steady, so I got a lot of blurry pictures and ended up taking a lot of doubles, just in case one of the pictures would reveal itself to be too blurry when I got home and uploaded them onto my computer. Some of them are, as misfortune would have it, and not all of them have doubles, so we’ll just have to live with the blurriness.





I think it was here that I was trying to take a picture of one of the chapels and a little car thing almost ran me over. I didn’t realize it was coming because my back was turned to it and I was pretty engrossed in getting my picture. So I was kind of shooed by one of the priests. Then I was almost run over by it again when it was coming back from whatever it had been doing in that chapel. That was after I was taking pictures of another chapel and a priest came up and shook his finger at me with a really sour look on his face. At least, I think he was aiming that at me. There was at least one other person taking a picture there, so who knows, but I found it mildly amusing for some reason. I walked away, of course, and stopped taking pictures there. I wasn’t about to do anything to disrespect one of the priests. It’s still a church, after all, and a very old one at that. Better to respect the rules or not go in at all.

Anyway, I won’t continue on about St. Peter’s Basilica. I had a very frustrating time in there overall so I’m not going to spend much time gushing about how beautiful and gigantic everything was. You get that sentence right there to describe it and pictures. This is only the first place we visited and look at how much time I’ve already spent on it.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention looking out into the Vatican from the museum and the fact that I found out—why I didn’t know this before I find very strange—that the Vatican isn’t part of Italy. It’s its own state, which is probably why it’s called the Vatican State. Once again, why I didn’t know this before is kind of weird. It’s common knowledge after all. Meh, well, I miss things like that sometimes. Heck, I remember when I suggested how wonderful it would be if cars just had a button you could push to keep the car going at a certain speed. Yes, that’s right, I thought up cruise control. Somehow I had gone through life having no idea that it existed. So, yeah, there’s your proof that things that are common knowledge have trouble sticking to my brain.

But I also found out that part of Arizona is actually part of the Vatican State. Apparently, there’s an observatory here that belongs to the Vatican. Who would’ve thought, eh?

After that, we saw the line I mentioned at the beginning of this entry and walked through it to get out and go into one of the shops. This was after Vig pointed out the window in the palace that the Pope usually addresses people from. Well, both of them. Though one is in St. Peter’s Basilica and isn’t used that often, mainly just for when the Pope is first chosen and goes to address the people. The window would be hard to pick out in a picture anyway since there’s nothing really significant looking about it. So, meh.

I didn’t get anything at the shop, though I was toying with the idea of buying a rosary. I decided against it, though, since I only knew I wanted to buy at least some little thing here in Italy but not what exactly it was that I wanted yet. So then we moved on to the Colosseum via the bus.

To be continued...

Day 2 - Munich and Rome

I think our night only lasted for about four hours. It’s really weird how that works. The overhead monitors showed us where the plane was on various different sizes of maps, our altitude, the outside temperature, the amount of time until we would arrive, the local time at our destination, and how far away we were. It also showed where it was day and where it was night on the world, which was kinda neat. We pretty much just charged right on through the night and, thus, it only really lasted for what I’m guessing was about four hours. They turned off all the lights for it and showed a couple of movies. First was the second National Treasure movie and the other…well, I don’t really remember what that one was called. I watched part of National Treasure, but mainly used the sound to try to lull me to sleep. Really, I didn’t get much sleep on this flight. I tried, there’s no denying that, but planes just aren’t that comfortable.

I did try to sleep in Munich, though. When my mom went through Germany years ago when she was visiting Kendra’s mom in France they didn’t give her a stamp on her passport, but Sarah and I got stamps. Thus, I was happy. We still had our luggage with us, though, since we were taking them as carry-on’s so we didn’t leave the airport. Instead, we just went through security and found our gate. At this point, even the thought of food made me nauseous. I blame the meals we got on the international flight. They weren’t really that bad, but after eating them both I just…I dunno, everything aside from little snack foods made me feel sick. So I just munched on some of the snacks I brought and didn’t eat anything else. Then I did homework. Yes, homework in Munich. Glorious isn’t it? After that, though, I started falling asleep so I went with the flow of the crowd around me and curled up on the very uncomfortable bench and tried to take a nap. I kept waking up and being in pain, though. Every fifteen minutes or half an hour I would regain consciousness and try to get back to sleep only to realize how incredibly uncomfortable I was. Then I’d have to sit up for a while until I started to fall asleep again and then went back to trying to lay down. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was actually kind of horrible and it didn’t help any that, when we got on the plane for Rome after seven godforsaken hours, they served…something. I have no idea what it was but it was hot, probably tasted pretty good to some people, and the smell of it made me want to vomit. It smelled good, it really did, but, like I said, unless it was some sort of dry snack food it made me feel awful. I can’t really remember that flight. I think I was dehydrated, which made me more susceptible to motion sickness, so that didn’t help much, but I was so exhausted that I just kept drifting in and out of sleep for the whole, what was it, hour and a half?

I can’t even remember my first view of Rome. I was in an aisle seat, though, so it’s not like I could easily see out the window. Anyway, we spent a goodly amount of time in the airport, which mainly consisted of standing around waiting for the other group members to get their luggage. I was partly delirious during this time, though, but Cynthia—Dr. White, the professor in charge of the whole trip—warned us that this was the time when things started disappearing, so I was pretty paranoid about that, too. Nothing disappeared, though. Some people’s luggage was still back in Denver, however, and the airline actually asked them if they wanted them to send it back to Tucson. What the hell?! They’re in Rome with NOTHING and the airline wants to send their bags back to Tucson?!

Sorry, little bit of a rant there. It didn’t have anything to do with me, but you know how it works when someone else is having issues and then their frustration kind of transfers to everyone else around them.

In any case, we didn’t get any stamp to prove that we’ve actually been to Italy, so that was mildly disappointing, but oh well. Then we stood around waiting for everyone to show up next to Vigo Ludo, our tour guide who told us to just call him Vig/Vic—I never actually figured this out until after I got back and talked to Kendra, but for him the “c” and the “g” sounds are probably identical, thus the reason everyone in my group was calling him “Vic” when I swore he was “Vig.” He amused me, though. He said things like “bloody” and “jolly good” and I later found out that his accent sounded so strange because, yes, he was partially raised in England. I think he spent his earlier years in Italy, so his accent is a mixture of both (Northern?) Italian and British.

And then we finally left the airport long after the sun had set and met Carlo, our bus driver. I really didn’t want to pull out my camera at that point so I didn’t even make any attempts to start taking pictures, but we saw part of the old city walls, drove over the Tiber River, saw some statues and saw the top of some cathedral in the Vatican. Remember that I was exhausted at this point and that, for that very reason, this was written far in the future from when it actually happened, so obviously I’m not going to be able to remember some of the names of the things that we saw.
Anyway, we got to our hotel where we found out we’d have to be downstairs for dinner at a certain point—I was thoroughly unhappy about this because of the whole food=nausea thing and the fact that I just wanted to sleep. The elevators were tiny, the electronic keys had issues working, we found out that there was a slot next to the door that we had to keep the key in to get the lights to work, and the inside of our room looked like something taken directly out of the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland. Not that I’m complaining, it was pretty awesome looking. I just wish that it hadn’t induced thoughts of ghosts popped out of the gigantic mirror encompassing the entire wall behind our beds and strangling us in the middle of the night.

As for dinner, at this point, I have no idea who we ate with our first night, but I’d be willing to bet two of them were either Louis and her daughter Monica and/or Christine and her niece Madeline. They served us pasta first, obviously, and then what they told us was veal. Now, I may be a meat eater and love it, but I can certainly relate to vegetarians. Why? I have issues eating baby animals. I figured that it was already dead, though, and the least I could do was try it, so I did.

It tasted like pork. And, apparently, it was too light in color to look anything like veal, so at this point I’m not sure if they were being entirely honest with us, but back then I still thought the remains of a dead baby were sitting on my plate. I managed to eat about half of the first slice until I started feeling pretty upset about it, so I just gave up and decided it was enough that I tried it. Like hell I was eating the rest of it.

But after that I finally got to sleep, so all was joyous and wonderful. On a completely random note, the toilets here are weird. Namely because of the fact that it takes a great deal of looking to find the elusive and very well-camouflaged button to make them flush.


The view outside our window. I have no idea what it is but it's neat looking and that's all that really matters. xD

Day 1 - Leaving the U.S.

Beward the Ides of March! OoooOOOoooo!

Actually, I think the real Ides was yesterday. Everyone just likes to think it’s today. ((A/N: No, today is the Ides, I was right the first time)) Bleh, well, either way, got up early today, finished stuffing everything into my bag and backpack, which was surprisingly easy, and gave a few last longing looks at my laptop and cell phone before turning them off. Yeah, I know, it’s only for a little over a week, but I’m a hermit. As such I pretty much live on the internet, sad as that sounds. You can’t blame me for being sad about my cell phone, though, I’m not going to be able to talk to anyone really until I get back. Considering that I’m going to be on the OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET, that’s pretty scary. Even at this point, it really doesn’t feel like this is happening. I don’t know what I keep thinking will happen that will make this…not…be real…but it just doesn’t seem like I’m really going to be going to Italy or that I’m going to fly over a whole frikkin’ ocean just to get there.

God, I never thought that would happen. I’m kind of afraid of water. Even if it’s just the bathtub filled with standing water it’s…really eerie. It’s horrifying when I can’t touch the bottom of whatever body of water I’m swimming in. So, yeah, oceans freak me out. I can go out and wade around in the shallow water, but even then I have to be with someone. Otherwise…no, just no. It’s too creepy. Try as I might to go out by myself, I get too scared to have any fun. I keep thinking paranoid thoughts about our plane going down in the middle of the ocean and then what the news will say about us and how Vin will be left all alone because his wife and unborn son drowned and that they’ll never find our bodies so they’ll have to bury empty caskets and…and…I really need to stop being this paranoid. It doesn’t help anything.

Wow, I really didn’t say anything about what happened today did I? Well, it’s not really significant anyway. I started feeling a little sick on the flight to Denver, then when we got off of the plane there was no little covered path/platform thing that led from the door to the inside of the airport. We just had to climb down the stairs out into the open and then walk in ourselves, which is joyous because it was nice and cold in Denver. Then I got a sandwich inside, we waited, we boarded and Sarah was two rows ahead of me and my damn backpack wouldn’t fit under the seat in front of me. It was something weird about how the seats were set up so that there was a metal bar right in the middle of my little area, giving me about a hand’s width of space to work with. Luckily, though, none of the flight attendants seemed to notice so I didn’t have to put it up in the overhead compartment. Madeline, a girl on the trip who I actually only talked to much later (but I am technically writing this in the future, so, y’know, whatever), sat in front of me and some…guy that didn’t speak very good English sat next to me. He was with the guy sitting next to Madeline. Probably on a business trip or something, though at one point the evil German stewardess, for this is what we dubbed her later, asked if we were traveling together. I…don’t really know why. Maybe she thought we were both morons and so must know one another. Dunno, we never even talked or anything. Even when he had to go to the bathroom—I was in one of the two aisle seats in the middle row we were sitting in—I just got up without him having to ask. I mean, when the person next to you starts getting up, you kinda figure you should jump up and do them the courtesy of not forcing them to climb over you. And he only had to get up twice. It was a ten hour flight and he only got up twice. Okay, yes, I’ll admit, I only ever got up twice, too, but that was a mistake since everything from my waist down started getting numb and/or extremely antsy.

But more on the evil German stewardess! Now, maybe she was just having a bad day, but as a stewardess don’t you, y’know, think that maybe you should let the passengers sleep when they damn well please? Both me and the man next to me were trying to take a little snooze and then she pops up to hand out little drinks and bags of something mix. Not that I mind getting something to eat and drink on a plane, but it’s a ten hour flight. Maybe some people are too stupid to do so, but I brought snacks. Really, sleeping was more important to me at the time. I wouldn’t have had as much of a problem with her doing that if she hadn’t said: “Excuse me, excuse me! I’m talking to you!” Especially since she said it right after I had been jolted awake and was looking around frantically trying to figure out where the hell I was. And she was just being rude about it in general, so I decided from that point on that I really didn’t like her. But that’s okay, she didn’t like any of us either. Madeline was trying to get her attention once because she just kinda breezed right by when looking for trash to take a little while later and so she gave her a little poke in the ribs. She recoiled and kinda…snapped at Madeline, asking if something was wrong and then telling her to “just talk to me.” In more pleasant tones, this wouldn’t have been nearly as annoying, but she was being pretty rude about the whole thing. I can understand cultural differences, but she’s a stewardess on an international flight. I’m probably wrong to judge, but, like I said, she was pretty sour the entire ten hours and that does everything but make me sympathetic to her.

So it's been a year...

...and I still haven't written everything down. :P In my defense, however, I was so exhausted at the end of each day that I never managed to write very much. I only had half an hour to an hour at night to write anyway. Then it was dinner and then bed immediately after. What I DID manage to do, however, was jot down notes as a basis for writing about my trip to Italy later. Shortly after I got back, I actually did start writing, but I only got through the first two days and most of it was just about the planes and ranting about the attendants. That, and a lot of rambling. Luckily, the rest of my trip is logged in a journal, via the aforementioned short blurbs I managed to write down before dinner and notes for each day.

I have no excuse for not writing about my experiences during the remainder of the year, especially summer since I didn't have anything to do. I was just lazy, I guess. xP

In any case, now that a full year has gone past and Spring Break--my last Spring Break--is here again, I've decided to dedicate a blog to the week-long trip I took to Italy last year with my elder sister, Sarah, and all the other folks from U of A involved in the tour. Basically, I'll be making the posts on the days that coincide with what I did on those same dates a year ago. If that makes any sense. And then I'll put all of my pictures from that day on photobucket for all to admire and enjoy. It starts tomorrow with the strange ramblings I wrote last year about the plane. Boring, yes, but it was the first day of my trip so it counts and should be recorded.

Now all I have to do is go through my files and FIND said rambling. >_>

Edit: Just kidding, I found my travel log and it turns out we actually left on the 15th, not the 14th. Hah. xD I was confused because the -original- departure date was the 14th before everything got pushed back by a day. See? I'm not as scatterbrained as you think. Just a little bit.