Holy Week(end)!

I had a rather eventful and somewhat spur-of-the-moment Holy Week(end). I was fully intending to stay in Florence, and maybe take a day trip on Friday or Saturday, but on Thursday I decided I was going to go to ROME with my friend Nirali and spend Friday AND Saturday in the nation’s capital.

This was, of course, my plan all along, but everyone told me I was crazy to go to Rome during Holy Week. Oh well, I did it anyway and it was a blast!

Nirali and I lived together in both Goddard Hall and Broome Street Dorm at NYU, so we know each other fairly well. Here, though, she lives off campus and I live on campus, and so we don’t see each other often enough for either of our likings! We made a pact to spend more time together, and I think this qualifies…
We caught the train Friday morning at 9:15 (we took the slow/cheap train) and got into Rome around 1:00 where we met up with some friends who were visiting from NYU: Paris. It’s their spring break. We checked into their hostel, and I since I came to Rome with no lodging plans (I like to live adventurously…) I asked if they had an open bed, which they luckily did. It was a bit expensive, but it was a nice hostel, and since we were getting up so early and I don’t have a phone, it was nice to just be staying at the same place.

We then proceeded to conquer Rome over the course of the next 30 hours. We saw basically everything there is to see, and walked ‘till our feet fell off. Friday was spent in the southwest part of the city and Saturday we did the Vatican and the northeast part of the city.

There are too many piazzas and cathedrals in Rome to name everything we saw (it’s quite a large city) but all of my pictures will be posted SOON.

I have to say, the Vatican City is very striking. And the museum was incredible. I can’t BELIEVE all the stuff they have in there! Of course the Sistine Chapel is at the end, and that’s the ultimate goal of everyone who’s there, but I was genuinely interested in all the stuff preceding it as well.

St. Peters Basilica was also incredibly beautiful. I can’t believe how ornate everything is…and these cathedrals are just so enormous…I personally think it’s a little intimidating, but I guess the whole “fear of God” thing is taken literally in that way…We saw Pope John Paul II’s grave site. People were kneeling and mourning all around it as though he had died last week…no one really likes the new Pope, so I hear…

It was cool to be there during the most celebrated time of the Christian calendar. The city is enormous, I think that was what I was most impressed by. They have a metro system, but…it’s only two lines, and honestly isn’t that helpful…
30 hours was more than enough, though, to see all of the city, and I was looking forward to being “home” in Florence for Easter.

Which was lovely. They pull out all the stops. I dressed up and went to mass at the Duomo at 11:00 am. There’s a tradition in Florence where oxen pull a cart into the middle of the piazza, and then a fake dove is sent out from the Duomo into the cart, and then the cart explodes into a massive fireworks display (the louder, the more prosperous the coming year will be, or so they say…). It was impressive! The mass was in Italian, so…that was interesting. The Duomo was packed, as was the city in general, but after church we walked around and enjoyed the 75 degree spring weather!

Yes, spring has officially sprung and it makes me want to do…NO work. Rome was sweltering at times. I’m getting tan though.

That was helped by TODAY’s journey to Cinque Terre (Five Lands) on the northwestern coast of Italy! In Italy Easter is called “Pasqua” and the day after Easter is a national holiday called “Pasquetta” (Little Easter) so we all planned to go to the coast! It is SO lovely. Basically, there are five small towns along the coast that are connected by national park trails that you hike to get from one to the next. And boy are they intense! LOTS of heavy-duty climbing and hills. We were all very sweaty and tired, and only really hiked between two of the “Terre” but…it’s really beautiful and the weather was perfect today. I took a few pictures, which can be seen here.

Being by the ocean always makes me nostalgic and miss home…I’m getting really ready to be done here, as amazing as this experience has been for me! It will be good to be home.