Day 6 - Scavenger hunt!

5-19

So we started off early and made it to St. Peter’s Basilica. There was actually no line which never happens so we were all pretty thrilled. We spent about an hour in there. There was a statue of St. Peter (it is his basilica so that makes sense) and apparently people come and touch his feet. Like kiss the feet or touch them. It was funny to see because his feet are worn down. Like the one where he had toes the toes are all slanted down and I couldn’t even tell if the other foot had even had toes to begin with. I laughed a lot because there were all these priests and even a monk and they were standing with it getting a picture touching his foot. It makes sense I just never thought I would see a priest tourist. Made me laugh. I liked St. Peter’s Basilica. There was also a statue made by Michelangelo that was of Mary holding Jesus. It was really cool. It was apparently the target of a terrorist-type attack because now they have it behind bullet-proof glass. I really did like what I could see of it. I took lots of pictures there.

After the basilica it was time for one of our graded scavenger hunts. So we split off into 3 groups and each got a list of 5 things we had to take pictures of. They had to be in a specific order and all on the same camera, that sort of thing. So we split up and it was me, Alaina, Jared, Linsey, Carrie and Kathryn (sp?). Kathryn has been to Rome before for spring break and is kind of a loner so she knows her way around really well. What I learned about Kathryn today is that she is a professional speed walker. Not officially or anything but that woman can MOVE! She kept this rigorous pace and the rest of us tried to keep up, we really tried, but we ended up jogging most of the scavenger hunt. She’s a beast! We actually all decided to take the metro back from the Coliseum so that we wouldn’t have to try and keep up the rest of the way to the hotel. Needless-to-say, we were the first ones done. Erdogmus said that we get some sort of prize. She hasn’t decided what.

After a lunch of nutella and crackers (it’s actually like toast except drier) and a kiwi, all of which were filched from the hotel breakfast set up this morning. We just cooled off in the hotel for like an hour. We were all sweaty from our hunt. We had a tour of the University this afternoon. It really wasn’t too spectacular. I mean, it was a really small space for a lot of students. I think they said there were over 150,000 students at this university and there are two others in Rome. That’s a lot of people! We did go see a church that was next to their Engineering College (which is a ways away from the main campus) that had a statue of Moses that Michelangelo had sculpted. Apparently he accidentally made the left leg too small so he had to try and fix it. He put a robe thing over that leg. He liked that one a lot, though, because I guess when he was done he looked at it and said, “Why aren’t you talking?” to it because it looked so real to him (NOTE: this is a very loose rendition of what went down because an Italian woman with pretty good but not great English was telling us this and I am trying to remember it). I thought that was interesting. Then we trekked back here to the hotel and I went and got a present for one of the guys at a shop about a short walk away and then went to a pizzeria really close to the hotel.

I did not get gelato today. I really just enjoy that there are gelato shops all over. I’m not even super crazy about gelato, I just like ice cream and they have like 4 shops on every block it seems. YUM! What I did instead was hang out reading and trying to recover in the hotel. We had a lot of time but I was just done. My roommates all ended up going off doing random things—one went with some others to exchange money and they got lost and the other two went looking for bargains—so I even got a little alone time which was glorious. I did open the window and poke my head out (there is no screen on our window which I think rocks) and I first of all saw this balcony next door with these beautiful red flowers climbing up it and I heard some Red Hot Chili Peppers. It makes me laugh how much American music we hear here. Ok, we may or may not be watching a movie here real soon so I’ll head out. Tomorrow we go to Florence so we are all frenzy-packing. Haha. Luckily, I did not pack too much or that would be a real pain.