Rome Weekend Adventures

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Ciao Friends and Family!

Today it donned on me that I have officially been in Rome for 6 weeks! Time has flown by so unbelievably fast which is a little scary because I feel like this semester is going to be ending before I even realize it. However, I really feel like I am taking full advantage of all of my opportunities here so I think at the end of it all I will definitely have no regrets.

In this blog I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about some of the fun things I've gotten to do in Rome! I know it probably seems like I've spent all my time in places other than Rome but over the past few weekends I've actually stuck around here and explored a little. The spectrum of activities I've done is pretty wide, from visiting the ancient Catacombs (underground cemeteries) to participating in Gladiator School... yeah... but in this blog I will just try to hit the big ones... starting of course with food (:

I think in one of my very first blog entries I talked about the fact that I hadn't eaten out too much since coming to Rome. Overall, my roommates and I still eat largely at home but since that last entry I have gotten to go to some great places. One of my favorite restaurants that I've been to so far is called Miscellaneous, or as the Notre Dame students affectionately call it, Mickey's. This place is located really close to Notre Dame's architecture school so Mickey's has kind of become the unofficial Notre Dame bar. The owner is really really nice and treats us very well. For example on the night of the superbowl, he gave us all free plates of spaghetti. Probably my favorite part of the Mickey's experience is the "sexy wine" that you get at the end of your meal. The wine is really called fragolina, or sweet strawberry wine but at Mickey's this wine takes on a life of its own. According to Mickey, a long time ago in Italy, there was a god who was known for his good looks and luck with the ladies. He was killed and his blood flowed all over the land. Sexy wine, coming from this very place, is made from grapes grown out of the ground fertilized with this god's blood. So if you drink sexy wine you will supposedly wake up looking "sexier" the next morning! Another favorite eating adventure of mine is gelato. If I could, I would eat gelato everyday but I've realized that may or may not be slightly unhealthy. Our place of choice is usually Old Bridge, an establishment right on our walk home that sells massive cones for only 1.50 euro. You get 3 flavors so I almost always get banana, nutella, and stracitella (chocolate chip). However, this weekend I tried another place called Millennium which was also really really good. I got Kinder (a type of chocolate bar that's pretty famous in Italy), Carmel, and Millennium (mix of fudge and vanilla).

Another highlight from one of my Rome weekends was getting to see a concert performed by the group "The Swell Season". If you've ever seen the movie Once, the Swell Season is a band made up of the 2 main characters from this movie. Considering that one of the Swell Season's songs, "Falling Slowly", is my number 1 played song on itunes, you can probably imagine how excited I was to get to see them live! I think what made the event even more fun was the fact that I didn't even know about the concert until the group of kids going was heading out the door! It was one of the very few spontaneous moments in my life where I literally dropped everything to go. Who knows maybe I'm finding a new side of Anne Witt in Rome (:

But of course in addition to tasting lots of yummy food and fun concerts I've made an effort to see a lot of the different sites around Rome. This semester I am taking a theology class called "Mystics, Saints and Sinners" where as part of the class, we get to go on field trips to different important religious sites in the city- lucky me! The very first trip we took was to the Vatican to take the Scavi, or excavation, Tour. I felt really fortunate to go on this because normally you have to reserve a place to do this months in advance. The tour takes you beneath the Vatican to where archeologists discovered numerous tombs and mausoleums dating back to the 1st and 2nd century, essentially an underground cemetery. These remains were found I believe in the 1930s when one of the Popes had insisted that he be buried underneath St. Peter's in an area that needed to be dug in order to have room for the tomb. In digging this very specific area, the construction workers hit the ceiling of one of the mausoleums and from there the rest is history. Actually the Vatican had to do all of the archeological work in secret because it was being done during the Nazi occupation of Rome, and the Vatican feared that the Nazis would destroy or take over the ruins if they found out. While the opportunity to see these very rare ruins was incredible, the highlight of the tour was getting to see the trophy, or burial place, of St. Peter. Because it is blocked by different structural barriers you can only see tiny slivers of the boxes, but from one angle you can distinctly see the bones of St. Peter that are illuminated by an orangish light. While our teacher told us about the many theories that dispute the validity of those bones actually being St. Peter's, at the moment I actually looked at the remains, I couldn't help but feel a surge of faith. It was a beautiful moment.

Our last trip for the class was to St. John Lateran Church or San Giovanni Laterano. This church, located right down the road from the Colosseum, is the very first Christian Church in the entire world and was historically the head church in Rome- even above St. Peter's- because this is where the bishop's seat was for many many centuries. While the church that stands now is not the original, there were pieces inside still left from the first church. The church was pretty simple inside but one unique element was the altar which on top, supposedly holds the skulls of both St. Peter and St. Paul. Behind the church, we visited the very first baptistery where the baptismal font looks very much like a large, fancy bath tub. There are stories about the baptistery being built for the baptism of Emperor Constantine, but this has been proven to be false. Across the street from both of these buildings was another building that was very special for Constantine's mother St. Helena. As a devout Catholic, St. Helena put a lot of effort into finding and bringing to Rome relics from Jerusalem. One of the most valued relics that she collected from Jerusalem were the steps that Jesus walked up right before his death on the cross. She literally had them cut out and shipped to Rome where they were placed in this building across from St. John Lateran. Today, visitors can access these steps, but only on their knees!

My last story (I promise!) is about my trip this weekend to the Vatican Museums. The lines to get into the museum have recently been getting longer and longer so another girl and I figured while Rome is still pretty free of tourists we would take the opportunity! Luckily when we got there, there were no lines so we were able to walk right in and get student discount tickets for 8 euro each! I think my first impressions of the museum were about how big it was. I had heard about how much there was to see, but thinking back to my other museum experiences in the States, I really wasn't prepared for how large this particular museum was. There are numerous types of exhibits to see from Ancient Roman art to Egyptian Art, each of which fills numerous rooms and floors of the museum. Overall, it took us about 3 hours to walk through even at a pretty brisk pace. Personally, my favorite exhibits were probably the Renaissance pieces, the modern art, and of course the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was extremely crowded with tourists so it was hard to get a good opportunity to stand and take in everything but even with our short visit, I was so amazed by the detail and complexity of the work. Luckily since I had brought a guide book along, I was able to read in detail about what I was seeing and found it very interesting that the Chapel was done in a spirit of despair rather than hope about the final judgment. On the one end of the chapel you can actually see St. Bartholomew holding what Michelangelo depicted as his, sorry to be graphic, lifeless flesh. This idea just seemed so contradictory to the immense beauty of the images themselves. Overall, I really enjoyed my time in the Vatican Museum, especially since I had the opportunity to beat the crowds!

Well I am officially all caught up on my adventures so far and will try to make a more conscientious effort to stay on top of things! Just know that you are all in my thoughts in prayers and I look forward to sharing more of my travels with you in the future!!

Love,
Anne

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Photos

My very first gelato!
Old Bridge