Roaming Rome with Renee

As a "welcome back to Rome" gift, Tom Cruise showed up last night.
I'm only half kidding.

The Mission Impossible 3 world premiere was here so we went to check it out. My friends and I got some good pictures of him, but when a girl started crying next to me, I knew it was time to get out of the crowd. The crazy nutcase didn't deserve 15 year old girls crying because of him. The "mission impossible" was trying to get out of the chaos in sandals without getting stepped on.

Anyways, here are only a select few pictures from my trip. There are so many that I decided to only post one from each city. The best of the best, if you will.

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Top o' the mornin', lads and lassies!
I'm in Dublin, it's the last day of my spring break. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am, indeed, alive.

I will update with greater detail later, but here's the lowdown:

Paris was so much fun. I met great people and barely slept. I saw the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Paris Opera House (where Phantom of the Opera is set), Champs Elysees, among other things.

Vienna was kind of boring. But in my history class, we'd been studying the Hapsburg empire which was located in Vienna, so it was neat to see their palace.

Cologne was rainy, but really nice. I went to a chocolate factory on my birthday and ended up getting free admission because of that fact.

Munich was a blast. I met up with my friends Emily and Robin there and we spent an evening at the most famous beer hall in the world - Haufbrauhaus.

Brussels was funny. I met my friend Mary Catherine there and the biggest tourist attraction is a fountain with a little boy peeing.

London was great. I have a bad habit - it's called theatre. In three days, I saw three shows: Mack and Mabel, Guys and Dolls, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Christian Slater. FABULOUS.

There was a mixup in flights from London to Dublin, so I got here a day later than expected, but it's been wonderful. Yesterday I went on a musical pub crawl (I had seen it on the Travel Channel a few years ago and decided that if I ever made it to Ireland, I'm doing it... so I did), and they had me sing! It was great! Today I toured the Guinness factory and had my free pint at the top.

And tomorrow I go home to Rome.
And in two weeks I go home to Indiana.

Here's my spring break schedule:

April 6 - leave Rome 18.04
April 7 - arrive in Paris 8.30
April 11 - leave Paris 17.16
April 12 - arrive in Vienna 8.30, leave Vienna 21.16
April 13 - arrive in Zurich 6.29, leave Zurich 16.02, arrive in Cologne 21.04
April 15 - leave Cologne 6.54, arrive in Munich 11.33
April 17 - leave Munich 7.26, arrive in Brussels 14.32
April 18 - leave Brussels late afternoon, arrive in London early evening
April 20 - leave London early morning, arrive in Dublin midday
April 23 - leave Dublin early evening, arrive in Rome in one piece

Ciao, amici!

I had quite an eventful weekend. My dad flew in on Wednesday so I spent a few days playing tour guide.
Wednesday we did a quick walking tour of ancient Rome, Thursday we meandered the Vatican City, Friday we toured the Sistine Chapel, Castel Sant'Angelo, and caught a glimpse of St. Peter's, Saturday we headed to Pisa and saw the leaning tower, and Sunday we souvenir shopped at Campo de' Fiori and Piazza Navona. It was a whirlwind of Rome!!

Friday night, our friends from Iowa State threw a black & white party at their flat, which was an absolute blast. They made liters upon liters of sangria and played really great music (everything from American Pie to old school *NSync). And later we discovered Woolite takes red wine out of white skirts!!

Pisa was really great. The weather was perfect. From the top of the tower, you can see all of the quaint little city, including the big soccer field!

The highlight of my weekend, though, was the vigil for Pope John Paul II on Sunday night. It started at 8:30 with readings from some of his writings, then continued with a rosary in Latin. Thanks to my friend Alexandra who had copied the Latin translation, I successfully said a Latin rosary! At exactly 9:37, the moment JPII died a year previous, Pope Benedict XVI commemorated JPII and gave us his blessing from his apartment window.
Approximately 500,000 had filled St. Peter's Square last night. We were all given candles and many people held their countries' flags. (Most of the flags were from Poland, JPII's home.) Before everything started, lots of people were dancing and singing and chanting "Giovanni Paolo!" I'm pretty sure I heard the "Santo, Santo" chant, too. (That's Italian for "Saint.") It was an amazing experience. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to attend.

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This weekend has been beautiful weather-wise. It's been about 60 degrees and sunny the past few days. (Except for Friday, the day Emily and I decided to wander and it rained.) It's perfect weather to get out and sightsee, but unfortunately, I have 4 papers to write.

Thursday night, I decided to take myself on a tour of Rome. All the monuments are lit up at night so I wanted to see them. I walked from the Pantheon, to the Trevi Fountain, to the Spanish Steps, to the Quarinale, to Piazza Venezia, to the Forum, to the Colosseum, to Piazza Navona, and back home. I considered going down to the Vatican but it was getting late and my legs were tired! I discovered the nighttime setting on my camera and took some good pictures. And you can be sure the pictures are posted at the end of this entry!

Friday, as I said, Emily and I decided to wander. We took the subway to Piazza di San Giovanni, where we were told the Scala Sancta are. The Scala Sancta (or Holy Stairs) are said to be the stairs Jesus climbed to face Pilate for his sentencing. St. Helen had them brought to Rome from the Holy Land. They are now protected by a walnut casing but windows are cut out where blood is present. (I couldn't see anything in the windows - the light was bad and the glass was dusty.) You can climb the stairs, but only on your knees. (see picture) Since it was a Friday in Lent, the Scala Sancta were quite busy and we had to wait quite awhile on each step...on our knees. I'm not going to complain, because at least I hadn't been scourged at the temple beforehand like a certain man that walked the stairs before me, but I couldn't walk very well after that!!

After the Scala Sancta, we went across the street to a church called Santa Croce. Nestled in a room off of the sanctuary are relics of the cross. Out of respect, I don't have pictures, but I'm sure if you Google "Santa Croce" you can see. We saw a large plank of the cross and the inscription Pilate had written above it. That was unbelievable.

Yeah, Christ's steps and cross... just another day in Rome.

And today is the Rome Marathon so all the streets are blocked off. Good thing I don't have to go anywhere!! The runners have a gorgeous day to do so. They're lucky!

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Tuesday at 6:00 am, the entire SMC Rome Program boarded two buses for northern Italy. I hadn’t even recovered from Barcelona yet.

We arrived in Ferrara early afternoon. The weather wasn’t too bad, but we stomped around a Jewish cemetary to see the grave of author Giorgio Bassani. We watched a movie of one of his books, The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis. Or something like that. I guess that was neat. Mind you, we’d been up since 6:00. After the cemetary, we checked out the main square in Ferrara. It’s actually really quaint and pretty. The d’Este family built two huge castles facing the main cathedral, illustrating the tension between church and state. I found it interesting. After seeing the square and a museum nearby, we checked in at our fabulous hotel. Most of us made it an early night.

Wednesday we boarded the bus at 8:00 and headed to Mantova (Mantua in English) where we toured two d’Este palaces - Palazzo Te and Palazzo Ducale. I really enjoyed Palazzo Te. I suppose Palazzo Ducale wasn’t too bad either, but I was already tired of all the art. It starts to look the same after awhile... We headed back to our hotel in Ferrara around 4:00 and my friends and I hit up the pizzeria across the street for some fantastic pizza. Afterwards, Abby, Megan, and I gathered in Robin and Emily’s room for movie night - Wedding Crashers. Don’t make fun of me because I hadn’t seen it yet. Hi-lar-i-ous.

(I think I should note here that our hotel rooms actually have televisions! And thanks to CNN being in English, we learned that people were stabbed in Campo de’ Fiori after the AS Roma vs Middleborough soccer game. Campo de’ Fiori is about a 5 minute walk from where we live in Rome, and had we been in Rome, we probably would have witnessed this. So as boring as all the tours were, it’s a blessing in disguise that we were in Ferrara.)

Thursday’s departure time was 7:30 and this time we were off to Ravenna. We toured countless churches with a guide with the strongest accent ever. And it doesn’t help that she’s crazy. But that’s beside the point. The most note-worthy thing from the rainy day in Ravenna (why does it always rain when we tour cities or when I forget my umbrella?) was Dante’s tomb. That was pretty awesome, actually. We left Ravenna around 3:00 and stopped at a couple unnecessary sights on the way home. One was a church... imagine that! And I lost an earring I had purchased in Barcelona, making me unbelievably sad. Dr. Prebys insisted on stopping to see the Po River (looked like the St. Joe River in Mishawaka) as well as the Adriatic coast (which would’ve been cool had I not been soaked from the rain). At least I found some chocolate in my purse, making up for everything (except the missing earring). If there were ever a time for chocolate, it was then. Definitely.

What I enjoyed most about all the time spent in the bus was zoning out to the tunes on my iPod and watching the scenary. Northern Italy is really stunning. It’s flat but green and is bursting with wildlife. I’d never seen so many herons and pheasants. They were beautiful.

Friday was probably my favorite day. We went to Padova (Padua in English) and Vincenza. In Padova, we toured the church of Saint Anthony, where the Saint himself is buried. We got to see Anthony’s tomb as well as a small museum of relics. They have his jaw and tongue there - both incorruptibles. It sounds gross, I know... but think of it this way: we actually got to see the flesh of a saint. I think that’s cool. No pictures were allowed so I paid a priest a euro for a tour book with pictures of the cathedral. Vincenza wasn’t anything spectacular. We toured the Olympic Theatre, which was nice for me. Since I don’t really appreciate all the art we see as much as I should, I really appreciated an ancient theatre.
Anywho, Friday was Saint Patrick’s Day and we spent it in Padova and Vincenza. Isn’t that kind of sad? But do not fret! When we returned to Ferrara, Abby, Emily, Robin, Megan and I celebrated St. Paddy’s Day in a very unconventional way. We splurged on a big Tex-Mex dinner, complete with a pitcher of margarita. The night was tri-lingual, as we all ordered in a strange mix of English, Italian, and the broken Spanish we remembered from high school. Mexican food on an Irish holiday in northern Italy... jealous?

Our final day in northern Italy was Saturday and we headed to Bologna. It’s really a nice city with lots of good shopping. And it was by far the most interesting day...
In the morning we saw the tomb of St. Dominic, as well as various other churches and works of art. The afternoon was spent in H&M and Zara (goooood shopping). I lost ANOTHER earring so I made up for it by buying a new blazer. Anywho, we were to be back on the bus by 4:00 and somehow I became seperated from my group of shopping buddies and didn’t quite make it. We’ve had it drilled into our heads since day 1 that if we’re not on the bus by the specified time, we’ll be left. So I wandered Bologna for awhile, not able to find my bus... and ended up hopping a train at 5:20. I mean, we all know the story about last semester when a group of girls were left at the airport their first day here. I made it home a good hour before everyone else, touched bases with Meganne the RA, and dyed my hair. (Don’t worry - nothing drastic, just darker.) The SMC Rome Program isn’t too pleased with me, but hey, I can’t change the decision I made. Besides, I’m pretty independent, I went to Spain alone... I think I can handle a 4 hour train ride back to Rome. Bologna isn’t Aruba. Haha, probably shouldn’t joke about that.

Today I have to go speak with the program director regarding my little “incident”... maybe I’ll just tell her I liked Bologna so much I wanted to stay. Or maybe I’ll chalk it up to being an Aries and she’ll think I’m nuts and kindly tell me to leave her office.

So that was my week in a nutshell. Sunday was spent attempting to be a dilligent student and today starts a whole new week. Yay! Until next time...

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¡Hola amigos!

I’m back from lovely Barcelona and I’m officially sunburnt. Jealous?

I had the greatest weekend. For those of you who don’t know, I went to visit my friend Karen, who is studying at a language school in Barcelona. She was a foreign exchange student at Mishawaka High School in 2003. She’s actually from Cologne, Germany but is absolutely brilliant and speaks 5 languages now (German, English, French, Spanish, and Latin). And for those of you who know Karen, she sends her love!!

Thursday evening I boarded a bus outside Hotel Tiziano to the train station. From there I took a train to Fiumicino Airport in Rome. At the airport I met three other American girls from Gonzaga headed to Barcelona, too. We traveled together and ended up staying at the same hostel. We got to the hostel safely. It was a great location, on the Ramblas right next to Plaça Catalunya and only a 10 minute walk from the beach. Upon arrival, I went right to bed because I was exhausted!!

Friday morning I wandered the city since I couldn’t meet with Karen until 6 in the evening. I discovered a STARBUCKS!!! (For the record, we don’t have Starbucks in Rome...) So I grabbed a caramel latte (and was surprised how easily my Spanish came back) and took pictures of a very pretty cathedral, the Ramblas (a tree-lined street filled with street performers and vendors), Plaça Catalunya (main square), the beach, the port with sailboats, and the most beautiful open market I’ve ever seen. The weather was absolutely gorgeous - clear and sunny, around 65-70 degrees.

I met Karen that evening and we went to dinner. Afterwards, we took the metro to one her favorite places in the city. It was a palace on a hill with a view of the city and below us was a fountain show with music. Breathtaking. Then we headed to a bar to meet up with her friend Beatte. This is an interesting story... Karen knows Beatte from her school, but they’re both German. Beatte brought along her roommate, a Japanese girl named Keiko, and Keiko’s other Japanese friend (I can’t remember his name). We shared a table with an English guy who works as a translator in Barcelona and his half-German, half-Spanish friend. I can’t tell you how interesting the conversation was or how many languages were being spoken. It was so darn cool. I learned so much about different cultures!!

Saturday morning, Karen and I met for breakfast and then she took me on the official Spanish tour. We met Beatte again and went up to the highest point in Barcelona called Tibidabo. There’s a small amusement park up there as well as a church. We sat on the church square for awhile and soaked up the beautiful sun and the beautiful view. What is so picturesque about Barcelona is it is located between mountains and the sea.

After Tibidabo, the three of us headed to Parc Güell, a park designed by Gaudi. (This weekend made me fall in love with Guadi’s architecture.) The air was so fresh there! We were still on the mountain a little, so we still had a great view of the city. We sat on a balcony in Parc Güell and had ice cream. Good times.

And Karen’s Famous Spanish Tour continued!! We hopped the metro to some park with an unpronounceable name. (Spanish is easy for me to pronounce, but the Catalan dialect is impossible.) In this park was the Arc de Triomf, which looks just like the arches of triumph in Rome, but at this point Karen told me a fun fact that I’d never considered: Spain wasn’t involved in either World Wars so all of its landmarks remain unscathed, unlike much of Europe (including Rome). The rest of the park was absolutely bonita, with a fountain again designed by Gaudi. (His stuff is everywhere.) We sat for awhile on an island in a little man-made lake and watched the people in rowboats on the lake and the wild parrots competing with the pigeons for food.

I had told Karen I wanted to have a typical Spanish dish at a typical Spanish restaurant for dinner. That evening we headed to the Olympic Village right on the beach to a really nice restaurant. She ordered codfish and vegetable paella for me, a very typical rice dish for the Catalunya region, and local wine. The fish was so fresh, the paella was absolutely delicious, and the wine was better than a lot of the wine here in Italy! Exhausted and completely stuffed, we called it an early night.

Sunday morning was the final day of my Barcelonian vacation. After breakfast on Plaça Catalunya, Karen took me to Sagrada Familia, which is a church designed by -guess who!- Gaudi. He died before he could finish it, so it is still under construction and is due to be completed in 2025. It is the most interesting church I’ve ever seen. The front and the back are designed in two completely different ways. The back has the only representation of the Crucifixion where Christ is crucified with the cross parallel to the ground (this sounds bizarre -and it is- but I’ll post a picture). Then we went to Hospital de Sant Pau, which is a really ornate hospital with pretty trails and orange trees. It sounds silly to say we visited a hospital, but Karen says it's one of those places worth seeing but no one ever mentions it.

We spent the rest of the day at the beach (hence the burnt nose and freckles) before catching the 4:00 bus back to the airport. Aaaaand now I’m back in Rome!!

I have successfully traveled alone. I’m invincible.

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Hey hey, just wanted to let everyone know I made it to Barcelona safely. There's internet in my hostel... but it's unbelievably slow. And for some reason my email won't open (SMC girls - is our mail down?), so if you need me, leave a message here.

Barcelona is absolutely beautiful. I may not go back to Rome. Ever. I had Starbucks this morning. Yup.

Stay tuned for pictures and the like!
¡Adios!

Hi, friends!!

Abby and I spent the weekend traveling! Friday and Saturday we were in Venice, then Sunday headed to Florence. It was a lot of time in the trains and I have trouble sleeping as it is... but we had a blast.

Venice
We arrived in the afternoon, took a boat taxi to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and went exploring! We hung out in St. Mark's Square and window shopped most of the evening. We were exhausted so we headed to bed early. The next morning we had breakfast at our hotel, then it was back to the main island. We spent far too much money on the little shops! After gelato in the square, I decided I wanted to feed the pigeons. That was the best decision I've made in a long time. St. Mark's Square is full of far-too-friendly pigeons. I took my chances with the bird flu, bought a bag of bird seed, and was subsequentally mauled by birds! I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Abby's afraid of the birds, so she took pictures of them all attacking me. They guy that sold me the bird seed was obviously entertained by the hundreds of pigeons attacking me, so he kept giving me more and more food. After I couldn't laugh anymore and my hands were battered from bird claws, we decided to call it a day and went back to the hotel for siesta. (I love that there's built-in naptime in Europe!) Refreshed and rejuvenated, we had a nice dinner on the grand canal, took in the nightlife, and retired for the evening. I loved Venice. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Florence
Florence was rainy. No, that's an understatement. The skies decided to unleash its wrath on Florence just as we arrived. Within the first half hour, Abby and I were soaked up to our knees. Our umbrellas didn't do much good. Freezing, we found refuge in a restaurant down the street from the famous Duomo. We warmed up and the rain got substantially lighter. We made quick trips to the square outside the Uffizi Gallery (where the David is located), as well as the beautiful Ponte Vecchio. Florence is very medieval-looking, with castles popping up here and there. I really liked it, I just wished it hadn't rained so much!

( As usual, pictures! )

Ciao tutti!

It’s time for another update! I know you’ve all been anxiously awaiting my regaling of recent endeavors. So here goes.

Our program has had quite a few birthdays this past month. To celebrate, a giant joint birthday bash was held at Scholar’s Lounge (the Irish pub mentioned a few blog entries back). The party was Olympic themed, had loud music, and drink prices were lowered for us. One of the highlights of my time here so far is watching the group of Notre Dame guys jumping up and down, singing as loud as they possibly could to Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone.” After expressing my incredulousness, one of the guys told me, “We LOVE Kelly!” You can’t beat that, folks. The ND boys LOVE Ms. Clarkson. Anyways, needless to say, Thursday morning’s Religious Studies class attendence wasn’t quite up to par. (Don’t worry, Mom, I made it on time!)

Friday morning, the entire program boarded two buses at 6:00 am. No one sells cappuccino that early, so I wasn’t a happy camper. We drove three hours in the rain to Siena, a historical city in Tuscany. Siena’s claim to fame is their beautiful Duomo (cathedral) and Saint Catherine. The Duomo is a breathtaking piece of architecture, but unfortunately was covered by scaffolding for restoration. We took a short tour of the inside, though. It was very pretty. It’s interesting to see the different kinds of design in the different regions of Italy. The Duomo of Siena is absolutely nothing like the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen here in Rome. In the Sanctuary of Saint Catherine is displayed the preserved head and finger of Saint Catherine. It sounds morbid (and it is) but that’s how relics are here. Siena was so fond of their saint that the petitioned to have her head. To squeamish American students, that’s pretty gross, but it’s actually kind of cool.
Anywho, had it not rained all day and had my toes not been cold and wet, Siena would’ve been absolutely fantastic. But it rained all day and my toes were cold and wet so Siena was only pretty fantastic.

Saturday I conquered my fear of shoe shopping in Rome. The whole shoe-purchasing experience here is a little different than what I’m used to... I’m forced to speak Italian and I tend to freeze up whenever I have to use this second language. But I mustered up some courage and proudly purchased a pair of suede heel loafers. I also bought a sweater at another store. The little old man that owned the store spoke to me in Italian and I actually carried on a conversation!! So much for freezing up when having to use it! I walked out of that store like I had just won a marathon.

That night, my friends and I had been invited to a toga party that some new friends with the Iowa State architecture program were throwing. They have an apartment just a quick walk from the Tiziano so we donned our togas and attended. It was a great night in Rome. We were served fruit and cheese and bread and wine and sangria... and I discovered Nutella. Nutella = tastiest chocolate-hazelnut-paste concoction on this side of the galaxy.
Remember I said the Tiziano is just a 5 minute walk to the Pantheon? Well, Iowa State’s apartment is even closer. So we HAD to take a toga picture in front of it. Unfortunately, I haven’t acquired a copy of that yet, so you’ll have to wait to see how American students really live it up in Roma. ( ”But )

Oh, and yesterday I bought a jar of Nutella. :-)

I’m planning on making it out to the Spanish Steps sometime this week (if the weather is nice enough and my midterms don’t overwhelm me), so I might be updating a second time. Keep an eye out.