St. Peter's and Pizza

After a few exhausting yet awesome days in Dallas, and a Labor Day weekend where I blissfully did NOTHING, I'm back and ready to write.

If you just showed up and am wondering why I'm writing about Rome.

So, Rome from August 29th to September 4th...I'll just spill out the memories in bits and pieces. If you want to compare how I remember the events now, to how I thought of them then.

• Wake-up Call. I'm up in my bunk, fast asleep, and suddenly there is this...noise. At 5 in the morning it sounded like static and zombie moans. Eventually I figured out it was Steve, our RA, telling us all to wake up for the bus to St. Peter's. I'm sure everyone was thinking something like, "Is this for real??!!" Jet lagged people need their sleep.
• St. Peter's Basilica. Huge. A colossus. And every inch covered in statues, paintings, cherubs, and the graves of saints. Candles lead down to the grave of Saint Peter. We heard Mass at the chapel of San Giuseppe. I couldn't get over the fact that I was kneeling in St. Peter's. Chanting echoed through the halls as we looked at the peaceful face of Mary on Michelangelo's Pieta. Though in places it is shadowy and dusty, and the tourists' feet wear away the marble, St. Peter's is the brightest place on earth.

I'll never remember it any other way.

• Getting lost is the only way. After taking a class picture, blinded by staring into the rising sun, we were sorted into groups for our first tour of Rome. My guide was Dr. Lowery, our Theology professor, who grew to become one of our favorite professors. In his sneakers and baseball cap, he told us that getting lost was the only way to see Rome. He was so right. You can take a map and get around Rome by following the Corso, but you'll never actually see Rome until you take a different side street every time you go somewhere, discovering vine-covered walls built around ancient columns, and lovingly kept paintings of the Virgin on every corner.
• Pantheon. It didn't take me a whole semester to discover my favorite place in Rome. I found it that very first day in the Pantheon, the temple once dedicated to all the pagan gods, which has now become a Catholic church. Dr. Lowery showed us holes in the center of the floor, where water would drain if it rained through the oculus in the roof. I went outside to stand by the obelisk, the sun bringing out the reddish tints in its sandy surface. I couldn't handle being in there for long, I was too transported by that little building. That sounds dramatic, but I'll do a post later in the year on why I love it so much.
• Fountains. Drinking fountains, decorative fountains, fountains guarded by the gods of the sea. Trevi Fountain is always too surrounded by tourists to be one of my favorite hang-outs, but that first day it was really something. It was mid-morning and beginning to be very hot. A young Italian woman sat at the edge, bathing her legs in the blue water, undeterred by the signs prohibiting this.
• An entire pizza. We ended our tour by walking beside the Colosseum. I wasn't able to grasp that this was the Colosseum--maybe after St. Peter's it looked small. Tired, sweating, and starving, we all went to lunch. We learned pretty quickly that it costs extra if you want refills on soda, and both the soda and the water come in large bottles that everyone shares. When you order pizza, you are served an entire pizza. I couldn't eat the whole thing that day, but throughout the year, you quickly worked up to it. All that walking required lots of energy. I'm probably way out of practice now, and couldn't make it through more than three slices. Also the bathrooms at that restaurant were co-ed, which was a surprise.

• Wine Tasting. That first week the school had a wine tasting led by Monsignor Fucinaro, the resident connoisseur. We started on the patio by the villa, and traveled around the campus. We went through the dark wine cellar, treading dirt floors and peering at large casks and barrels. We all drifted into the vineyard, kicking up golden dust as the sun set over the vines. Jamie and I were so full from the hor d'oeuvres of prosciutto and melon, cheeses and bonbons, that we were pouring our wine out under the branches.
• Lake Albano. A long, hot, walk up the hill. The lake-shore was a dark, ashy mud, but once you waded in you could relax in the cool, clear water. Italians don't like it when you use credit cards, as Jamie found out when the cashier glared at her when she paid for her gelato at the lakeside store.