Roman Holiday

I LOVED Rome. I had the best week there, and it was so much fun. Marisa has been studying there all year, so it was great to see her again, and it was also great to be with people who know the city well. I was able to stay with her at the hotel where she lives. The week felt like an actual vacation. It was relaxing for the most part, the food was incredible, and I got to do a lot of sightseeing. I’m so glad I went for the entire week instead of traveling in other parts of Italy first like a lot of people did. I felt really settled by the time everyone else arrived, and I was able to see things in beautiful weather. The entire weekend was colder and very rainy.

The food in Italy is incredible. I heard that American Italian food is different from Italian food, and many Americans don’t like it as much. I loved everything I had. There’s a great restaurant right by their hotel called L’Insalata Ricca. I got Ravioli Butter and Sage, Gnocchi Sardi, and Bruschetta Bianca there, all of which were wonderful. I also got lots of pizza in different places which tasted like the pizza at Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory. Also the gelato everywhere was sooo good. I already miss the gelato!

The only thing that I didn’t like about Rome was the creepy men everywhere trying to sell you things. They are very persistent and I heard stories that they try to pickpocket you also. It’s just annoying to see them everywhere and say “no grazie, no grazie”. I also learned a lot of Italian words, and it was interesting to be in a non English-speaking country since I never had before.

The second day that I was there Marisa had a presentation so Anthony and Ying took me sightseeing. We went to the Forum, Colosseum, Mouth of Truth, and the Key Hole. They were great tour guides - Anthony knows about everything and Ying makes up stuff about places being blown up in World War II. We accidentally tried to sneak into the Forum - apparently they charge for it only during Easter week. This Italian lady followed us in and yelled at us. You haven't been yelled at until you've been yelled at in Italian. I really liked the key hole – you walk up a hill and there is this door that has a key hole in it. When you look through it there is a gorgeous view of the Vatican framed by shrubbery. It was really cool and something I never would have seen on my own.

On Thursday, Kelly, Charlotte, and I went on the Archeobus tour. It was a hop on-hop off tour on one of those open roof buses. We got off at the catacombs stop and took a tour of the Catacombs of San Callisto. It was really cool. There are so many tombs in there. One of the rooms used to have the remains of 9 popes from the 3rd century. That was pretty amazing. We were also in a room that had the remains of St. Cecilia. It was funny because our tour guide was telling us how much of a maze the catacombs are. He said, “If you follow me the tour is 15 minutes, but if you get lost it can be for eternity.” After the tour we were trying to catch the last Archeobus back, and we ended up waiting on the wrong side of the road and running to the bus when it passed us. We were lucky to get back on that bus.

There were a ton of Notre Dame kids in Rome for the weekend because our Campus Minister, Andrew Hoyt, arranged a pilgrimage. We had lots of holy events to do starting on Friday. The first thing was going to Saint John Lateran. We went to see the Passion Relics – a piece of the cross, nails, thorns, and the inscription from the cross. It was pretty amazing to see. I felt bad though because we were waiting on line to go in, and this sweet Spanish-speaking monk was letting people in. These Italian people came and cut in front of all the ND people waiting in line, and they were pulling each other in. The monk was so flustered and felt so bad that we got cut. We didn’t really care, but I felt really bad for him. That’s one thing that I really learned this week – Italian people cut lines. I was cut many times in the short time I was there.

After the Passion Relics, we went to the Sancta Scala. The Holy Stairs is the staircase that lead to the praetorium of Pilate at Jerusalem, which were sanctified by the footsteps of Jesus during his Passion. It is tradition to climb it on your knees, and that’s what we did. It was much more painful than I expected, because they are covered in wood, and the wood is very uneven. I’m sure it’s purposefully supposed to hurt, but still, it was really hard to walk when we reached the top and my knees were bruised the next day. It was an awesome experience, though, because you pray on each step and there’s a beautiful fresco of Jesus on the cross at the top that you can see as you climb.

That night we went to Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum. It would have been amazing had it not started raining as soon as we got there. We waited for 2.5 hours in the cold rain, then you could hardly see the Pope through all the umbrellas, and it was hard to follow along since it wasn’t in English and you couldn’t really read the booklet in the rain. It was a really cool experience, but it wasn’t really fun at the time. Afterwards Marisa, Anthony, Kelly, Charlotte, Angela, Caitlin, and I went out for hot chocolate, which was delicious (hot chocolate in Italy is like brownie mix).

The next day we had an early morning at the Vatican. I set my cell phone alarm for 6:20, but when my phone died the date got messed up, so I woke up on my own at 7:06 and we needed to leave by 7:30. Marisa and I got ready incredibly quickly, and we were only a couple of minutes late. We waited for probably 3 hours to get into the Vatican Museum, and it was raining again. Those creepy men that I mentioned were all selling umbrellas, and we really needed one. I asked Kelly to haggle for me since she has a New York edge about her. I told her to go for 2 euro, and they were asking 5. It was so funny because she was yelling “NO! 2 EURO!” to the guy. I finally got it for 3, which was well worth it.

Once we got inside the tour was great. We didn’t really like our tour guide and felt like we ran through a lot of the museum, but the stuff we saw was incredible. There are amazing paintings and sculptures in there, and we were in the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. The tour was over 3 hours long. It’s amazing how much art the Catholic Church owns.

The best story of the trip was Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square with Pope Benedict XVI. I brought a skirt for the mass because I think that if you’re not wearing a skirt it doesn’t feel like Easter, and I stand by that decision. I was surprised at the amount of people wearing jeans at the mass – I would never think to wear jeans to see the Pope. When we got there it was a little cold and cloudy, but it was a pretty nice day. We got there 2.5 hours early for mass, but it wasn’t bad waiting since we were sitting in our seats. We were 11th row center, which was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, right before mass was about to begin it started raining. And the rain just got worse and worse and worse. I kept thinking it couldn’t get any worse, but it always seemed to.

So, we got really, really wet. Marisa and I were under my 3-euro umbrella which began to leak (I’m proud of it for lasting as long as it did). Every time we stood for a mass part we tipped our chairs down on the ground so they wouldn’t get too wet before we had to sit back on them. Our skirts got soaked. Our shoes were completely soaked. I went to put my hood up in the middle of mass, which apparently had collected a pool of cold water, which immediately went down my neck. It was just a miserable, miserable time. And through all of the commotion, and due to the fact that there was no English and we couldn’t read our booklets, we got pretty much nothing out of the mass. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t even a homily, not that I would have known if there was. Kelly was sitting huddled in a poncho, and at communion time she didn’t notice that we were all going. She yelled, “It’s communion?! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!!!” Then on the way to communion when people were cutting Marisa, she turned to me and said “I can’t believe I just got cut on the confession line!” She didn’t even realize she said confession until I was talking about it later.

We took the bus back from the Vatican, and an old Italian man was laughing at us and tugging on his pants, making fun of the fact that we were wearing skirts. Then we went to the restaurant to get take out food to eat in our nice warm beds, and all of the waiters were making fun of us. We got back and changed, climbed into bed and ate our food while watching Love Actually. Then we fell asleep for about 2 hours and didn’t even realize it. We went out later with Anthony and Kelly for Easter dinner, which was great, then we went for our last gelato.

I was surprised at how sad I was to leave Rome. I’m usually ready to come back to Dublin - and it was definitely nice to come home - but I had such a great time in Italy. It was so much fun hanging out with Marisa, and it was cool that my ND friends and Dublin friends became friends. I would love to go back to Rome again some day.