may 2:
wake up nice and early.. like all the other days. we headed to the pantheon before we headed to the vatican. this time we could actually go inside the pantheon because mayday was over. um. awesome. jealous much?
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| ^^this picture doesn't even begin to explain how HUGE it is.^^ |
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^^they floated the stone up from the nile. they are a solid piece of stone!!
how they got them to float up the nile is a mystery to me. ^^ |
this was our view walking to the vatican:
i was secretly wishing that i would run into the pope while we were at the vatican.. unfortunately we did not. the line up to get into the vatican was craaaazy long! like i'm pretty sure it wrapped around seven different blocks and continued on into seven different countries. okay, exaggeration much? but you get the gist.
but... lucky for us we went with teachers who know the ropes a little bit so they got something like the fast passes you use at disneyland to skip in line. so we only waited about ten minutes in line which is much better compared to the ten hours that everyone else spent in line. it also helped that we went so early. it was nothing like what i had expected. mainly it was very overwhelming. because there was five hundred million people. the crowdedness was insane. and it also is a bunch of museums that all lead you to the sistine chapel. i guess i just pictured it more house like, not museumy... holly and i lost taylor and stacy so the two of us stuck together. now, once upon a time my family went to vietnam. that'll have to be a story for another blogging day. anyway, i kind of learned the trade of squishy people and shoving through from our trip to vietnam. so i just grabbed onto holly so i didn't loose her and we started squeezing through. she was laughing her face off. we were kind of like fish swimming upstream. we went through some weird room with large tapestries on the walls. and the walls never seemed to end. we were in there forever.
we got through so fast, which was the plan, because then there was plenty more time to be in the sistine chapel. new favorite: michaelangelo. that's right, i'm crushin. his artwork is awwweesooooooome. i'm sure he used different adjectives to describe it. but, new century here. i really do admire his work though. he probably is working his way up to my other hero's. now that is a great big deal. my hero's are people like mr. darcy, mc-dreamy, travis clark, hercules... you get the gist. great people that are hard to live up to. so long story short, its a big deal that he's making it up to the list. anyway. the sistine chapel is one of the most amazing things i have ever seen in my entire life. i even snuck in a picture of it...
after the chapel we went into st. peter's basilica. so the style of that one is baroque.. which probably doesn't mean much to most, but just for the record.
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| ^^crazy busy.^^ |
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| ^^crazy beautiful.^^ |
one of michaelangelo's pieta's is in this basilica.
we walked around the ambulatory and all around really.
holly and i went into the crypt. i can cross that off my bucket list!!
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| ^^i didn't take any pictures down there... but this is from the main floor looking down.^^ |
also... when people would take their pilgrimages they would come to st. peter's and rub his statue's foot. it was for good luck or peace and blessings or something. it's crazy how much it has eroded over the years.
after our adventure in the vatican we grabbed some lunch... fanta, of course!
we headed off to ostia. life was such a beach there! ostia came into my life at such a great time. this was about the half way mark. and up to this point we had been go go go from six a.m. to one or two p.m. okay, okay, i'll admit, part of that was our fault for staying out past curfew... but do you blame us? i mean how often are you going to be in london, paris, or rome. so we had been taking advantage of every waking second. but to be honest with you, i was exhausted. but i would have never admitted that then. because i was NOT going to be that pansie that stayed in the hostel to facebook my fiance or skype my boyfriend or sleep like ninety-three percent of the other girls did. that is one of the reasons why holly, stacy, and taylor and i got along so well. but it was nice to have a beach and time to relax and recoup so we could get ready for the second half of the trip. our hotel was literally right on the beach. we would walk out the back door and our feet were already getting covered in sand.
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| ^^that's the view from our window!^^ |
it was kind of great. i mean, hello mediterranean. like the sea. it was kind of cold if you just stuck your feet in, but one you just got a lot of braveness built up and dunked under once you came back up it was so warm and the sun literally was a breath of fresh air and warmed you right up. the water was gorgeous and so so clean. and the sand was so so sooo soft. there was even some black sand. emma and catherine joined our little four some. they are so fun too.
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| ^^taylor, catherine, stacy, and me... i'm not sure where emma and holly ran off to^^ |
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| ^^emma and catherine.. they are adorable.^^ |
after a couple of hours at the beach we went for a cal zone. because um.. they are awesome.
also, fruit stands are a new favorite. they had them everywhere. and for so cheap. like you could get quite a large crate of fresh strawberries for only one euro. and they were worth every cent. and then naturally we got some gelato. because you know, i have this weakness for gelato.
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| ^^i heart gelato! and check out all that whipped cream. delish.^^ |
then we went back to our hostel. this is what it looked like:
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^^there were three beds on this side and three on the other.
and a large bathroom through that white door.^^ |
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| ^^the beach is out that window and to the left! so close.^^ |
that's where we met jason, at our hostel. he was our receptionist. here's the long story short version: we wanted to get a movie because they lent them to you at the front desk and you could watch them in the basement in the entertainment room. and stacy was just flirting up a storm with him. so we became friends. he taught us how to salsa just there in the lobby and taught us all the insider tricks we should know about. we watched the da vinci code. the four of us were freaking out because most of it is in paris and we were just there! (nerdy, i know.) the movie ended and we took it back up to the desk and lo and behold jason was still there... he asked if we wanted to go out for some gelato. now, i start drooling at this point because he just so happened to mention the word 'gelato.' everyone else kept their cool though and could manage to say yes. we got our gelato and sat on a bench right next to the beach. although it was like twelve thirty/one i still ate every last drop of that gelato. mainly because i didn't know what to do with it otherwise, but also because it is life changing. italy sure knows what's up. good way to put an end to that day. we made a friend, and ate gelato.
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| ^^yay for air-dried sea hair and gelato!^^ |
may 3:
on this day we woke up at six thirty! the earliness never ends. now, this day is the half way mark of the trip. SAD! we went to ostia antica. that place is so so awesome. it is just a bunch of ancient roman ruins. these ones were fun because we got there early enough that we were the only people in the entire place. we wandered through... you could walk up old temple staircases, sit on the steps, explore wherever you wanted basically. i looooved it there so much.
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| ^^dents in the stones from the chariots^^ |
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| ^^original tile.^^ |
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| ^^indoor plumbing at its finest.^^ |
can you say beautiful?!?!?!? i looooved every second. oh. so. very. much!! if you couldn't tell by the plethora of pictures. that was our side stop because then the rest of the day we drove/spent in florence. which will have way too many pictures to include them all in this post, because if i didn't already overwhelm you with the millions just from a day and a half of pictures. so more to come on may 3 and florence!! until next time.
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