11 de noviembre - 14 de noviembre

To the naked eye, this is a world plagued by callousness, overran by a media that assures us of our fears and doubts; with less compassion comes more suffering and so on and so forth until an inevitable death. But we can all recognize that life does not have to be so.  By noticing the beauty of the world, the good people, a Beethoven Sonata, hugs, now this immoral dark sphere will transform itself into sublimity. Sadly, these natural beauties sometimes bid us farewell, and we must stick around and search for an alternative that can attempt to fill the void. Today I had to come to terms with the harsh reality that one of these beauties was now gone. This morning at the Centro de Idiomas, as I approached Nicogrande to experience our daily embrace, my senses tingled as if to alert me of a grave danger; sweat began to accumulate on my palms and shivers crept down the back of my neck. His face indicated a state of mental discomfort. Although the hallway lacked significant lighting, the cause of our torment was staring me in the face. Nicogrande was bigote-less! My lionhearted mustache man was now just a hairless coward. The world really is a bitch some times. My mustache staggered with discouragement like a fierce stallion alone on a stud farm with a raging erection that is slowly dwindling to the sorrowful state of flaccidity.

Luckily Nicogrande's clean-shaven face symbolized something greater; he would soon be reunited with Stefanie, his beloved girlfriend of four and a half years. Lucky for me, I would get a chance to meet her for myself. But these two did not intend on an average, dull meeting point. To get to her we would need to board an airplane and fly to Rome, Italy! So that's what we did.


11 de noviembre


We decided to fly with RyanAir because they by far had the cheapest tickets, but with unbelievably affordable flying costs comes unbelievably annoying flying regulations. To check baggage costs an ungodly amount, your carry-on must be under 10 kg, and they try to trick you into purchasing the most useless overpriced garbage imaginable. They are the airline from hell, but they are the cheap airline from hell, so us poor college students will gladly accept their audacity if it means we can save a buck.

I had to wear all of my clothes on the plane so that my backpack would not be oversized. That way I could carry it onto the plane

Madrid Airport at sunrise

Spain from above. RyanAir sucks.

We made it to Rome alive, but not without hearing a dozen different promotional scams by the RyanAir stewards. "Buy this brand name cologne." "Hungry? Buy one of our incredibly overpriced, low-quality airline snacks." "Need to use the bathroom? It will only cost you 1 Euro." "Have you seen these special ionic bracelets that increases your energy, awareness and overall well-being? Well we at RyanAir have them available in a colorwheel of different options." "There is no smoking allowed onboard, but we here at RyanAir sell smokeless cigarettes, so you can enjoy all of the benefits of nicotene without the harsh smoke. They are available in regular and menthol." ...

For the first time in a long time, I would not be couchsurfing because Grande's girlfriend and her three friends were renting a Roman flat during their stay, so all we had to do was pitch in a few bucks and it was home for the next four days.

A lot of people told me that Rome was just a giant tourist nightmare, and that I could easily visit Europe without seeing it. But these must have been people that went during the high tourist season of summer because in November it was an absolute delight. Yes it's true, there are a lot of people at the main attractions like the Vatican Museum or the Trevi Fountain, but all of my attention was focused on the unbelievable artistic ability that humans can possess, so at times it felt like I was alone in a city full of magnificence.

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy who began his reign in 1861

Awesome puppy in a fabric shop window. Turns out his name was Hugo...

Kitty art in a shop window

12 de noviembre

The Vatican Musuem? Yes please.

In the morning, the whole gang (Grande, Stefanie, Emily, Emily, Carrie, and I) headed off to spend the day in Vatican City to visit the famous museum and the impressive St. Peter's Basilica.

Vatican Musuem

 

Every ceiling was magnificently decorated like this

I think PETA would have a serious bone to pick with this baby putting this goose in a headlock like this

Another extravagant ceiling, but at a closer glance, you can see that the ceiling was painted. A lot of decorative art in the musuem plays with this theme

A giant tapestry of everyone freaking out when Jesus was resurrected

Is this one painted?

A woman who took the famous saying a little too literally...

My favorite painted ceiling. If I remember correctly, it was inside one of the rooms where everything (every inch of wall and ceiling) was painted by Raphael

Inside one of the Raphael rooms

A portion of a wall in one of the Raphael rooms

This was by far my favorite painting that I saw in the musuem. The School of Athens by Raphael. He paints this giant scene that includes over a dozen famous Greek philosophers and scientists like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, and many more. This picture is only a portion of the painting. In the middle, you can see Plato in red and his student Aristotle in blue. A little more to the left of them is Socrates in green engaging in debate. 

Another portion of the painting

Another Raphael wall painting. On the left is Homer in blue and Apollo is playing a lyre on the right...

The musuem also had a nice collection of modern art.

Contemporary stained glass

 The main event, The Sistine Chapel:

I wasn't supposed to take pictures inside the chapel, but there were tons of people waving their cameras in the air taking numerous pictures while the guards yelled, “No photo!” I figured if so many people were taking pictures, it would not hurt to take a few discrete pictures to capture the surprisingly huge size of the chapel. I know this is not a valid justification for my actions, but I will say that if these same people were to leave the museum to jump off a bridge, I would leave with them too, but only to take pictures of the mass suicide. Basically, the Sistene Chapel is a giant room within the Vatican, built in the late 15th century by Pope Sixtus IV, and contains a painted ceiling and fresco of the Last Judgment by Michelangelo and also frescoes by Botticelli. It felt like being inside of a holy place; it was unheated, relatively silent, the atmosphere was serene. I just sat on a step and gazed around at all of the different paintings that illustrate various biblical events. Luckily I had Stefanie there to explain to me the significance of each event. 

Part of the ceiling. In the middle, you can see the famous image of God creating man...

The Sistine Chapel is a lot bigger than I expected

Vatican City

Orange trees inside the Vatican

A brief history of the Pope-Mobile:

Human-drawn Pope-Mobile

One of the many horse-drawn Pope-Mobiles that spanned from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th Century

Legit bullet-proof, Mercedes Pope-Mobile

And finally the sexy, off-road, adventurous, safari Pope-Mobile 

The all black Vatican cat. He was very conceited and not very photogenic

Picture of a picture. The Pope handles all sorts of foreign relations...

The lovebirds being in love and doing fun love things on a balcony in the Vatican. There's St. Peter's Basilica in the background

Coolest set of stairs ever. One of the girls discovered that we could have a perfectly clear conversation through whispering from opposite ends of the staircase. Grande and I were near the top whispering towards the bottom and the girls could hear us perfectly although they were on the ground floor and vis-á-vis. 

The Emilys

Marching on the walls of the Vatican

Let's go to the top of St. Peter's Basilica to get a sunset view of Rome!

We were not the only ones to think of this. This is the cue to get into St. Peter's Basilica, which took roughly 30 to 45 minutes.

Grande suggested that we play the "Thumb Game" to pass the time while waiting in line.  Everyone starts with two thumbs in, and the object of the game is to guess how many thumbs will remain after counting to three. Each player has the ability to keep both thumbs up, or put one or both down. Ex: 1, 2, 3 SEVEN! If there are only four thumbs remaining, then I do not get the privilege of removing one of my hands from the center. The way to win is to have both of your hands out of the circle. The last person remaining with a hand in must do some silly/embarrassing thing that the whole group decided on before the start of the game, but no one wants to do. Hopefully this was not too confusing of an explanation. The game is really fun. The punishment for this game was that the loser had to walk over to a random stranger and ask them to take a solo picture of the loser making an embarrassing muscle-man pose. Luckily I did not lose, but who did?

 In this picture, Carrie, Grande, Stefanie, and one Emily remained.  Emily really did not want to lose

Carrie got out, so then there were three

Grande got out, so only Emily and Stefanie remained. The look of fear on Stefanie's face.  

Emily lost.

Vatican guard

Façade of St. Peter's Basilica

Inside of the basilica at the base of the dome looking down at the impressive Renaissance style architecture

View of St. Peter's Square from the top of the dome

Roma

View from the dome

Lovebirds being in love

Grande giving Stefanie the old surprise headbutt to the face...Classic

Rome at sunset

Back inside the basilica

St. Peter's Basilica after sunset

Jumping rope on the streets of Rome with a big chain

13 de noviembre

You can just walk along the streets of Rome and stumble upon ancient ruins scattered ten feet below at the height that the city used to be. It is really interesting that Rome has layers to it. 

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. It is huge.

Grande and I making love at the giant monument

Notice the statue. This same image is all over Rome. At first glane it  just looks like a freaky picture of two babies sucking on wolf nipples, but with a slight knowledge of Roman history, this is an image of the origins of Rome. The two babies are Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. Legend has it that they were abandoned at birth and left in a basket to wade down the Tiber River, but they were adopted by a wolf mother who had just lost her cubs, and they somehow managed to rise to greatness. This just goes to show that we all need a little wolf nipple in our lives... 

An afternoon in the historic center of Rome

Ancient ruins

A plaque that indicates the size of the Roman Empire at its height. All the white was once part of Rome. Spain, France, England, much of North Africa, Eastern Europe, and a good portion of the Middle East

The Roman Colosseum off in the distance

Just like stadiums in the US today, your seat belonged to a certain section. This is the entrance to section LIII (53)

The whole gang took a tour of the Colloseum with an English speaking, Italian guide named Paula. She helped to add historical facts and set straight false-legends about the Colloseum.

Inside the Colloseum

A lizard inside the Colloseum

You can see a reconstruction of part of the fighting floor, and below the floor where  they often kept wild animals. There was a trap door that would open and, for example, a hungry and angry tiger would jump up through the door to devour a slave, who had to fight for his life. 

I went to an upper level and just sat down and tried to imagine what life was like in those times, picturing human lives being wasted for the sake of entertaining thousands of irrational spectators. The emperor putting on this free torture show in order to gain the favor of the people and to help others forget the misery of a life they lived. After an hour of sitting and focusing on this topic, I still could not imagine this life as a reality.

The Colloseum

What's that white figure off in the distance? Yep, a bride. Another married couple crept on by your  creepy narrorator

Look closely on the left side of the grass and you will see a fabulous couple, the pleasantly plump man shirtlessly soaking in afternoon rays.

The only statue of a Goddess in the Colloseum

I don't make the weiner statues, I just document them

Off to Palatine Hill, the place where Rome was founded. There have been inhabitants on this hill since roughly 1000 BC, and was also the residence of many emperors, high nobels, and fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini.

An old stadium used for horse and chariot racing. But as you may notice that it is pretty small, small horses, goats, children, and midgets were the main participants

View of part of the Roman Forum, which was once the center of the Roman Government and public life

Of course without fail, a Roman Forum cat

Roman Forum

Walking around the Roman Forum, I felt an odd, eerie sense accompany me. Rome was once the largest and most important empire in the world, and this area was once the center of the empire. Now it is nothing but a collection of stone and brick ruins. During the height of their empire, the Roman people would have never believed that their reign would later become a ruinous tourist attraction, just like if you ask an American right now if we can picture Wall Street or the White House lying in decay.

Roman Forum

Roman Forum at sunset

Roman Forum at high sunset

As for my evening plans, the group decided to split up for the night; the lovebirds went their separate way, the three girls went thier own, and I decided to take a walking tour with Jason, our guide from Palatine Hill, a friendly and gentle Canadian guy that has lived in Rome for eight years, who gives tours as a profession. Luckily, the tour group was only two couples and me, so I was able to walk with Jason and talk to him about Roman history.

Rome has some nine hundred churches in total, so it is impossible to visit them all. Most tourists just visit the top three or four big ones, but Jason took us to one that no one really knows about, but if it were in any other city it would be one of the main tourist attractions because it is absolutely gorgeous and supposedly one of the twelve apostles is buried there. 

The famous and extravagant Trevi Fountain

Trevi Fountain

We also walked to the Pantheon, which during the ancient times was a temple to all of the gods, but is now a catholic church. It is over two thousand years old, and is still to this day the world's biggest unreinforced concrete dome. The dome was constructed in the form of a perfect circle, so that you could theoretically connect an identical dome to the bottom. The diameter of the dome is 142 ft (~43 meters).

Inside the Pantheon

The dome has an oculus in the middle that opens out to the sky, so when it rains outside, it rains in the Pantheon too. For this, the floor is slightly concave with a drain in the middle. 

After the walking tour, I continued wandering the streets with no particular destination in mind. After eating my daily dinner of pizza and gelato and walking for a while, I came across a church that was seemingly ordinary compared to what I have been seeing the past few days. But at the entrance to the church, there was a girl holding pamphlets and occasionally handing one out to someone as they entered the church. For a church to be open at 9:30 on a saturday night seemed a bit odd, so I approached her to find out more. She told me that a small free concert was about to begin, a distinguished catholic choir; she did not have to say more—I was in.

The "ordinary" church

The inside was not so ordinary

Inside the church. View from my seat

This choir was absolutely angelic. Along with the amazing acoustics of the room, I just sat there with my mouth ajar and tears constantly wanting to retreat from my eyes. This may have been the best experience of the weekend

At one point, the choir split up onto opposite sides of the church, creating an incredible effect 

They ranged from little kids (roughly age seven) all the way to grown men

 14 de noviembre

A large group of ancient ruins that we walked by every day, which we referred to as "The Cat Sanctuary." Not just because there were a lot of cats their, but more because there was an actual cat sanctuary there where they had food and shelter for the cats. On the last day, we read a sign that told us what famous building was once here. Can you guess what it was? One hint, a very famous historical event once took place here.

Cats at the ruins

What is now a cat sanctuary was once the senate building where Julius Ceasar was assasinated!!!

Piazza de la Retonda, where the Pantheon is

The Pantheon

At Piazza Navona. Fountain made by Bernini

Piazza Navona

Lovebirds dancing in Piazza Navona

Another fountain in Piazza Navona

back to the Pantheon

Each one of these giant marble columns is a single hunk of marble querried from Egypt, dragged more than 100 km (~62 miles) from the quarry to the Nile river on wooden sledges, and brought over by boat across the Mediterranean to Rome, where it was dragged from the Tiber river to this site. Each column is 39 feet (12 m) tall, five feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 60 tons in weight. 

Trevi Fountain during the day

cool older man reading a newspaper at a cool older fountain

NICE!

Easily the nicest McDonalds I have ever seen

Roman McDonalds

And then we had to leave :(