Italy: Venice and Rome

Venice was fantastic. I absolutely loved it. I spent two days just wandering the streets, looking at all the glasswork in the shop windows and popping into every church I passed. It was great. I went into one church that had an exhibit on Vivaldi and instruments from his time. Where were St. Olaf music majors when I actually needed them? Nowhere. I also went to St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace. Now, I had already been to the Palacio Real in Madrid. I thought I knew what I was in for when I stepped into the Doge's Palace. Nope. There is absolutely no way of comprehending the splendor of the Doge's Palace until you get there and see it. It was crazy.

I also met a few Canadian girls when I was in Venice. It was really nice, because I was there by myself and when I met them, I had someone to talk to. I went out to dinner with them one night and we ended up sitting around talking about world affairs for three hours. Fun times!

After three days in Venice, I took off for Rome. The first day in Rome, I went to the Vatican Museums. That was the day I was there by myself. I felt really guilty about going by myself, because I was meeting Catie's family the next day and they all really like art. But they didn't end up going at all, so I'm so glad I went! The Vatican Museums were amazing. First, I practically ran to the Sistine Chapel so I could get there while there was still room to breathe. It was pretty amazing, but I'm still convinced that Michelangelo was on some sort of drug when he painted it. I don't care if he is Jesus, NO ONE has that many muscles in his arms. I also randomly stumbled on the School of Athens in the Raphael rooms (because I don't like to actually READ my guidebook, and so didn't know it was there). I turned the corner, and, all of a sudden, OH MY GOD! It's Plato! Yay! So, yeah. I spent 5-6 hours in the museums before I went to St. Peter's. St. Peter's was also really cool. It was huge. There were a lot of people there, and I felt kind of bad being a tourist with limited interest in the current religious significance of the basilica. Oh well. I feel worse when I'm in smaller churches that have fewer tourists. I also got to see the tombs of some of the popes. None of the medieval popes, which I would have liked better, but I did see John Paul II's tomb and Pius XII (known to me as the "Holocaust/evil pope), as well as the tomb of the Stewarts, a line of Catholics in England pretty close to the throne. It was interesting.

Saturday, Catie's family came in from Florence. I met them at the train station and we moved to our (nice) hotel. A real hotel! We set out for the Colosseum, picking up a Roma pass on the way (which is a good plan, though--for 20 Euro, you get entry to 2 museums/sights, discounted entry to any included sights after that, AND free transportation. Oh, and you get to line-jump). However, once we got to the Colosseum, it started to pour. We walked over to the Forum, but could barely see anything through the rain. We ultimately ended up walking back to the hotel, hanging out there until setting out for pizza.

The next day, we wanted to go to St. Peter's for the Pope's blessing (even though I'm really not a fan of the current Pope--he's a bit crazy and I tend to fall on the side of Brazil in their little dust-ups). However, we decided to cut through a park to get there. Guess what? It started to rain. And rain. And then we got lost. So we missed the blessing. We did go see the Pantheon (which has a poured concrete dome from 2,000+ years ago. We still don't know how they did it. Unfortunately, it's now a church instead of a Roman temple) and the Spanish Steps. I got to see John Keat's house and Lord Byron's house. It was pretty cool.

The next morning, we took a train to Bern. We had to get up at 4 AM to catch our train to Milan at 6:30.