pope! :o)

Rome and the Pope

tuesday june 9
we went to class.. it was very fun we walked around and learned about the Augustan period of roman history..very interesting lots of pictures.. after class we came back to our apartment to get ready for our cooking class we had last night - it was awesome... we made a three course meal - a vegetable mix for appetizer, home made, own rolled pasta with eggplant and tomato sauce - super delicious - and we made a tiramisu type dessert which was also really good - our iron chef ingredient was 'eggplant' which was amazing! and it was nice to have legit food since we've just been eating plain pasta a lot. there were only 12 people in our class who were going to eat and we made enough food to feed 30 - are you surprised - cuz i am not lol.. it's great for us since then we wont have to buy more food! we were so full when we got home we couldn't move but we have pasta dough to roll noodles!

wednesday june 10
we got to see the POPE today! :) we woke up very early to get to the church to get our tickets for the papal audience. so then we realized it was at st. peters so we were on the hunt for a bus stop to get on a bus to go half way across rome. which was rough they are pushy here and we missed 3 buses before we got wise and crossed the street to get on the bus before the main stop. which was bright - after this we made it to the vatican/st peters and went to our seats. finally the pope came out and he drove around in the pope mobile for a little while and everyone cheered.. they read a reading in english, french, german, spanish, italian, and russian, so he has cardinals do these readings - he gave a homily type thing in italian which we understood it to mean you need to believe in the bible and see it as the whole truth and how we have to believe as it's written and the vatican is the platform of christ ect. and then they cardinals came up and did 'shout outs' and acknowledging all the groups that showed up - the choir's all sang when they were named, and then even after every group was called he blessed everyone - after the shout outs Pope would give a speech in that language which was really it was hard to understand because of his accent but nice to be blessed... lol.. when it got to italy everyone was goign nutso there were little kids there - how awesome of a fieldtrip to have - and everyone was super excited.. and then he did a closing remark, sang the our father in latin, and gave a final blessing and blessed anything we wanted as you held it out.. and it was reallly awesome overall - they had tv's so that you could get a better look since there had to be at least 500 seats.. it was really nice though..
overall super awesome i have great videos and great pictures ill post some since the pope's the man
ciao!

weekend in Capri!

So this weekend. we'll start with thursday night - we had to be at the central train station at about 7 to get on the bus at 730 which turned into 8pm so we got told we weren't allowed to sit down or be in front of the Nike store which is the meeting place for the bus to alps trips.. next we hopped on the bus and had a 4 to 5 hour bus ride to Sorrento where we were staying for the weekend - it flew by we probably played about 40 games of euchre if i had to guess.. lol. from there we arrived at our hostel which was extremely nice - the staff was amazing and the accommodations were lovely.. we were so hungry since we didn't stop for dinner and the staff brought us out some free snacks and some left over cake from a party - the cake was amazing!! friday we had to be up bright and early to get ready to go to capri. well the weather was too bad to go there - since we wanted to go into the blue grotto. and we had to make other arrangements so we went to Pompei instead. pompei is an ancient town that is now ruins - when we were there we walked around the ruins which were well preserved because they were once over taken by a volcano eruption from mount vesuvious so we saw fast food restaurants they had, old houses, and mosaic art they made in addition to many other things. from there we had a break for lunch and had to gear up to climb a volcano. we got all our stuff together hopped on a bus and rode up quite a ways - from there we paid to climb to the top of the crater and we were able to look down inside of it which was pretty awesome and the skyline view was amazing! it was quite a hike so that was a nice treat at the end. after this we went back to our hostel, and got ready to go to dinner - they had planned a dinner out somewhere in town so that we could have a nice dinner with everyone - it was just that very nice :) we had five course meals and the food was delicious - however the service not so amazing - they don't care really about customer service in italy like they do in america.
saturday we awoke to find out we were going to go to CAPRI! the long awaited capri - everyone says how wonderful it is. and i mean all these places are just amazing - so we get our own private boat to take us to the island and take us around and we end up at the blue grotto - basically you have to get in a row boat and lay in the bottom of it to get inside the blue grotto. and when your in there the rocks don't go all they way down to the bottom of the sea so the sunlight reflects into this cave making everything a crystal blue color - aka its pretty amazing. our guide told us its about 80 feet deep and it was the roman kings swimming pool - and you aren't allowed to swim in it well so the sign says but our guide let me sarah and kendra jump in to swim in the blue grotto for a while - we were the only ones that got to swim in it - so i now get to say i swam in caesars pool :) hehe - after the blue grotto we hopped back on our boats and continued on to the main land part of the island. from there we were allowed to explore the island and lay out on the beach - we also we told we could taste limoncello - which is a lemon, vodka, sugar dessert alcohol that is produced on the island of capri and only served in italy. so we tried a variety of flavors, in addition they grow some massive lemons were talking lemons the size of cantelopes and they make lemon flavored everything - chocolate is another specialty so that was amazing to taste the variety of chocolates they produced. after that we just laid on the beach and waited for our boat to come back and pick us up.
we had saturday night to chill out and hang out with our friends at the hostel so we just sat back - had a glass of wine and hung out all night
sunday we were on our way to Positano we packed up our things and hopped back on the bus to get us close to town. from there we had to climb up the hillside again to get to the main part of town. once we were here it was really nice - we just kinda hung out on the beach, swam and relaxed all day - which was really nice after go go go all weekend. however they were offering cliff diving as an excursion which sounded cool so we rented a boat to go find a cliff to jump off of and the water was to rough to jump but we did hop in to swim, the current was really strong we made it to the rock to climb but the current was to strong and wouldn't allow us to climb up the stone so after hopping in we hopped right back out and onto the boat. (sounds a lot easier than it was, right?) on our way back onto the boat Meghan got stung by a jellyfish.. which sucked. and we made our way back to the mainland got some lunch and gelato, got all cleaned up and made our way back up the 500 stairs we had climbed to get down, hopped on a few buses and went back to our hostel to get on the main bus and drove back to rome! the ride back to rome was about 5 hours and we jumped on a bus that took us back to our apartment and did a little homework last night and crashed - it was an exhausting but amazing weekend!

wednesday june 3

so today we went to a lot of places - it was pretty exciting,
we went to the spanish steps, gesu' - a jesuit church, we looked for a statue of a huge cat on via della gata - but it was non existant - the santa maria della sopra manerva, and a wax museum, and there was supposed to be a pasta museum - but it was closed which was a bummer.. we also saw the inside of the pantheon -
tomorrow for class we are going to the museo capitolini which is pretty sweet its two museums that are connected underground - which is pretty awesome
and we also ventured back to the movie theater and we able to watch angels and demons so that was pretty cool - the movies amazing- it is places we see here on a daily basis so if you want a taste of rome - GO SEE IT! :)
tomorrow we have class and need to get ready for a weekend away - we are leaving tomorrow night to go to Capri, Pompeii, Sorento, Positano, Amalfi, and the Blue Grotto.. it should be pretty exciting and were going with a lot of our friends that we've met here.. :) woohoo!

ill write again on sunday when i get home - since i won't have internet all weekend
ciao!

monday and tuesday

Yesterday we basically laid around, it rained for the first time since we got here, which sucked, cuz as soon as we walked outside there was like a huge down pour - however we were able to make it to school, and we paid for a trip to Cinque Terra in a few weekends which will be pretty fun - we then ate some pizza - which yes the pizza is soo good here :) and came back to our apartment to clean - we had some of our friend we've made while we were here over to play cards and eat dessert. it was a blast and nice to just sit around and hang out and chat..

Today - tuesday - it is Festva de Repubblica here which is like the american 4th of july and we were going to go to the parade, but didn't wake up in time, so we decided to walk in that direction to some shops that we had found another time we went that way. so we did some window shopping in all the name brand stores that are around here that were actually open and bartered with some street vendors - but that was about it, on our way back home we were going to go to the markets around our apartment but realized that everything is basically closed for the holiday which stinks but we get it. and we are just about to make some dinner and chill out for the night, and getting ready to make some fun plans for tomorrow when everything is open again :)

this weekend

so. yesterday - saturday - we went to the outlets which were about 3 to 4 hours away from our apartment . we went to all your big name fashion places - prada, gucci, burberry, valentino, ect ect.. amazingness basically since it was the outlets it was cheaper than normal, and then since we were in europe its even cheaper still :) so i bought my momma a gucci purse and some burberry scarves and myself a burberry purse, it was really awesome over all my roommates bought some gucci shoes and prada purses and things like that - it was pretty good though
we were so tired when we got home we went to our friend DJ's for dinner and after that we went to bed - we had to get up at 6am this morning to go to tuscany for the day. so we hopped on the luxury buses again and we drove to Pienza and we walked around for a little while and to see the scenery. from there we hopped back on the bus and we went to another town in tuscany - here we got to see the set of the new twilight movie at least the part that was filmed in italy which was pretty cool - so we took pictures all over the square the biggest bummer was the finished filming yesterday so we weren't able to see edward :( haha..
after that we got to walk through a wine cellar, and taste a variety of wines and cheeses the place offered - and it was wonderful i bought 2 bottles of wine for a later day to enjoy :)
next we hopped back on the bus and went to a restaurant that offered us a 5 course meal. = amazing
course 1 - assorted ham, salami and cheese
course 2 - pasta with tomato sauce
course 3 - pasta with mushroom and basil sauce
course 4 - chicken and potato wedges
course 5 - dessert - biscotti type cookies

after this we had like a 3 hour drive home on the bus
we overheard some girls talking about going to see angels and demons at 1030 tonight so we were pumped and wanted to go too so we made plans to meet up and go
so we hopped on the tram and we walked the rest of the way and we got to the movie theater at 1020, and found out the movie actually started at 10 - which sucked, so we know now not to listen to other girls haha. since we were on the hunt for this place - but we managed to make good time to find it like 30 mins instead of like 45 which it would've taken.. so since the movie attempt was over - we bought some gelato and walked back - and well i would like to say it wasn't a total loss when we did get gelato :)
while we were walking home - mind you it's been mind blowingly hot here and it hasn't rained, we've basically sweat all day - well today it decided to be cold and rainy which sucked. but it started to rain on the walk back which we were doing more leisurely than our sprint walk to get to the theater.

ready for more adventures tomorrow, ciao!

vatican pictures