Italy

Hello. As you may or may not know, I just returned from Italy, where I visited Florence, Pompeii and Rome. What an awesome trip. I was there for five days and we spent the first night and the next day in Florence, took a train to Pompeii for a day and Rome for two days.

We didn´t do much in Florence. The famous Statue of David is there in a museum, but the line was three hours long and therefore, we didn´t see the Statue of David. That would have been a fun thing to see because looking at art for me is fun, but when I see something famous (like the Statue of David or the Mona Lisa) makes art that much cooler. Otherwise, Florence was a beautiful city, although it was lightly raining all day, we weren´t too disappointed. So we went to this palace that had a whole bunch of modern art, so we were there for a few hours.

Then we took the train to Pompeii. Two of the girls I was with really wanted to come here and see the dead people. Way back in history (about 79 A.D., ut don´t quote me) a huge volcano erupted and wiped out this little village, and now the ruins are there to visit in Pompeii. They have these cast moldings of humans and you could still see the expression on their faces from their reaction to the volcano. It was really sad if you though about it. But that´s about all there is to do in Pompeii, so the next day we headed to Rome.

I definetely had the most fun in Rome. The first night we wanted to find the Colosseum, so we wandered around Rome and found it. It looked so beautiful all lit up at night. And it was so cool to see from down the street and it was just peaking through some buildings, it was awesome. For me especially, you know what the Eiffel Tower looks like, the Colosseum, the Vatican, the cathedral in Sevilla and you never think you will be able to see them in real life, but it really is amazing. We took a few pictures of it at might and after that we ate some gelato, really amazing ice cream. We pretty much ate that everyday after we ate out pizza or pasta. Italy definetely had the best food of all European countries I have been to thus far. But really expensive.

The next day in Rome, we went to the Vatican. We waited in line for two hours to see it and the Sistine Chapel. It was amazing, ut we didn´t realize there was a museum there too, so we were walking through this museum in the Vatican, and every room we entered that had artwork on the ceiling, we asked ourselves, "is this the Sistine Chapel?" We did that about 50 times before we actually saw the actual Sistine Chapel. It was hilarious. We weren´t allowed to take pictures, but everyone else was, so I started to. Then all of a sudden, a voice come on over the loud speaker and says in eight different languages "it is prohibited to take pictures, video recordings and smoke" or something like that. So I accidently took some pictures of the ceiling, eventhough it was prohibited...but, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, right??? After all that, it was like 3 o´clock and we left and ate some lasagna and salad and I told the girls I was with that I wanted to walk around the Vatican from the outside to take some pictures. Thank God I said that because when we got to the main courtyard, we had to enter through security and we were finally there. We realized there were all these chairs set up, so we asked a security guard what was going on. He said the pope is coming. I thought to myself, "maybe I heard wrong" so I asked him again, I said, "Pope Benedict is here?" He replied, "Yes, he is saying a mass for Pope John Paul II." At that time it was about 4 o´clock and the mass wasn´t til 5:30. I wanted to stay, of course, but the other girls I was with weren´t catholic, so I didn´t think they would want to stay, but surprisingly they did. I was so excited, so I saw the Pope. Rome was fun.

That´s about it, pretty much everything went the way it was supposed to, and I saw the Pope, the colosseum, ate tons of pasta, pizza and gelato. Only two more trips left for me, Prague and Scotland. I have two weeks of school, then 12 days of traveling, then two days of school, then finals week, then I come home. So this semester is wrapping up, really sad, but I have definetely enjoyed my time here. I will try to keep you all posted as much as possible. Thanks for reading!!