Viterbo

This is a picture of my room in the Hotel Balletti Palace. I walk about a block from this hotel on my way to school every day. We drove from Rome to Viterbo in the morning. I had to be at the hotel by six I think and we arrived in Viterbo around one or two. We drove around looking for the hotel for quite a while, misreading signs and going the wrong was down one way streets. The town looked gorgeous, with narrow streets and tall stone buildings. We eventually did find the hotel (it was next to the train station) and with a few hours to burn we decided to go get one last gelato. It was good, but not the best. We went to the Ipercoop, shopped for a while and then drove back to the hotel. I collected my backpack, left my drug dealer hat and sunglasses along with a few books I had finished and said goodbye to everyone. The Woomerts gave me a goodbye bag of supplies from the Ipercoop. The contents of which all had a special meaning from the trip. A jar of Nutella. Some shaving cream. A huge glorious stack of paper cups (which are up in my dorm room as we speak (the Nutella is long gone)) and a package of angel babies. Then I was waving goodbye, smiling at their parting words.



The hotel was cool when I walked in. There was an old Italian in a suit behind the desk. It was still a couple hours before I had to meet with the rest of the USAC students so I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do in the mean time. I went up to the man and asked "USAC."

"Ah, Oosack, si si!" he replied and handed me a key. I walked up two floors and found the room. I dumped my one backpack and my one plastic bag in the room and then with nothing else to do, went for a quick walk. I walked around the hotel and along a dirt path behind some appartment buildings (this would become the short cut to Marco's appartment eventually and the fastest path to the University if you went around the outside of the walls). When I got back to the hotel there was a youngish Italian man talking on the phone in the hotel lobby. He saw me and motioned to me to wait until he was finished on the phone. He introduced himself as Marco and said he had tried to call my room, but I was obviously not there. Marco was working for the USAC program and was super nice. He asked where I was living and when I told him I was staying at the dorms he offered to show me where they were (only about a five minute walk from the hotel). When we got back he told me that we were now meeting a bit later in the hotel lobby since the group flight was late so I went back up to my room and read until seven thirty.

When I came back down the lobby was occupied by several people. I sat next to a sick guy named Ricardo. Further down the couch was a guy named Ryan sitting with a couple girls who I couldn't remember the names of. A little later we were joined by a very enthusiatic man named Justin (who kept speaking Italian to the man at the front desk and Marco when he eventually came down). After Justin there were too many people for me to keep track of.

The big group of us followed Marco out of the hotel and through the town to a Pizzaria in the old part of town (I'm actually not entirely sure where this place was now. I haven't seen it since). I sat next to Ricardo and across from Conner (a tall guy I had met during the walk) and the two girls who had sat next to Ryan in the lobby (they turned out to be Jessica and Cara) and they were both sick (they have asked me since if I hated them that first night because they were sick and I keep telling them that being a germiphobe (if that is how you spell that word... man I miss spell check) just means I wash my hands more than normal people and don't like drinking out of the same glass (or Fanta bottle as the case may be). It doesn't mean I'm racist against people with colds). The pizza was really good and there was lots of it. We all ate at one long table underneath a large tent filled with Christmas lights. After dinner Marco took us to see some of the town (the Papal palace and Valley Faul). We also met the program director, Stephano (the emphasis is on the A). He had just gotten back to Viterbo with all the people from the group flight (which had apparently gotten lost). They were just going to the pizzeria to get dinner. I headed back to my hotel room and went to sleep (I met Greg, later that night when I let him into the hotel room after he had got back from dinner. He had been on the group flight). And that was my first day in Viterbo.

Some last images of Rome

Homeless guy in Rome. At least I'm assuming he's homeless and not just waiting for the bus with a baby stroller full of junk, but you never know. He was quite as good as the fat sleeping homeless man with the stain down his pants I saw everyday at the last bus stop, but this guy comes pretty close.

Here's a random wall we found in Rome while we were lost after trying to use one of Rick Steves' maps.

My first Kabab. You can see the hunk of meat behind that guys left shoulder. I will miss Kabab's more than any other food from Italy (except gelato).

The Vatican Museum

We left our hostel early the next morning in order to visit the Vatican Museum. The tour guides were out in force that morning and we were bombarded with offers of free tours! Skipped line! It culminated in an old Australian following us for two blocks trying to convince us to take his tour, "I get you in for free! No lines! We leave soon! You could join us!" The "join us" was a mistake. I could not resist the classic zombie movie line and Tallis and I walked the next half block like zombies say "Join us! JOin US!" When the tour guide realized he was being mocked he left us alone.

Contrary to what Rick Steves said, there were no lines to get into the Vatican museum. I now understood how the tour guides said they could get us into the museum without waiting in any lines. You can't wait in lines if there are none.

The Vatican museum was very big and filled with very old/famous things. Lots of marble statues with not enough clothes on. One section was filled with statues of animals, which was really cool. Apparently one Pope was something of a naturalist. We finished off the museum in the Sistine Chapel. The entire room was painted by some famous artist or something and we weren't allowed to take pictures. We got yelled at for sitting down again and eventually left.

All the rooms and hallways in the museum had amazing ceilings like this one. We spent pretty much the entire time doing what Schyler's doing in this picture (The hallway behind Schyler was filled with ancient maps of different parts of Italy).

As we were leaving we walked past a large group of people heading into the museum. Schyler picked up a flyer someone had dropped and walked past the line asking everyone "You want tour? I give you good tour! No lines! I give you special discount!" At the end of the line he threw the paper on the ground in disgust! "Now I know what if feels like to be rejected!"

The decent

The stair case leading down from the top of the Dome...



The staircase curving around the edge of the dome. It's like a Tim Burton movie. There is nothing but one wall and empty space on the left side of this picture (If it was upright)

Once we got to the spiral staircase it was only a few hundred curves before we got to the roof. I think we wandered around Rome for a bit longer after this and then headed back to our hostel. We were all pretty tired of walking.

The Top of St. Peter's

The view from the top! The elevator was more expensive so we took the stairs. After climbing for about half an hour we made it to a roof. There we red a sign, "we'd like to warn our older visitors that there are 390 stairs from this point." (or something like that) We climbed up into the Dome and stood at the very bottom edge of it looking down at the tiny people. We could reach up and touch the stones of the giant mozaics stretching over us.



I was really zoomed in for this picture.



And this one. I think that is the Pope's house or something.




This is the edge of the roof of the dome (I think I was zoomed in here too).

And this is a picture of Rome.

The climb

Tivoli (in her priest-proof-scarf) and Tallis climbing up inside the dome of St. Peter's.

Vaticaning...

This picture was us entering the large square in front of St. Peter's Basilica. The square was very cool and surrounded by a huge wall of columns.



That's the fountain in the center of the square (it's not really a square... because it's a circle... but it has the same function as a square and I don't know how to spell Piazza). That building in the background is the front of St. Peter's Basilica. It had a really high square front with statues along the roof (there were also statues all along the wall of columns). The Basilica then stretched back away from the squre (circle) really far ending in a giant dome (which you could see from the squre, but I don't have a picture of it. I'm not sure why. Probably because I was in a bad mood).



This is the line to get in. As you can see that is not St. Peter's in the background. It was a very long line (but you can see the statues now! Look! See!). We arrived early in the morning and were overwhelmed by the amoung of people in line and left. When we came back in the afternoon there were more people in line, but we were prepaired this time. We gritted our teeth and lined up too. Fortunately St. Peter's is very big and the line moved along fairly quickly. When we finally arrived at the steps the Vatican sin police mad us leave because Tivoli had her shoulders showing (I would have thought they would be more concerned about little boys being adequately covered, but apparently not). We went and bought a scarf thing from a street vendor for Tivoli and headed back to the end of the line. We finally made it to the steps again. Apparently the sin police thought Tivoli was covered to the point where she wouldn't be a temptation to the priests and they let us through. We checked our bags and ourselves through security and entered st. Peter's behind a large tour group of Indians.




It was too big to take pictures of so I didn't. This is what it looks like if you don't look up. The place was gorgeous though. You should totally go to it if you have a chance. Huge square columns of marble stretched up to the ceiling which rose higher up into painted domes. We walked around for probably half and hour looking at everything. It was very gorgeous and mysterious. The sin police yelled at us for sitting on the floor. I'm not sure why. Maybe we were sitting on god... or they could have been worried a priest would mistake us for a little kid. I'm not sure. Either way we didn't sit down anymore.

This was St. Peter's gift shop. I didn't buy anything. Once we had thoroughly explored everything we left in search of a way up into the dome of st. Peter's.