Day 22: Friday
Last day of class with Tobin Craig! He basically let us talk about whatever we wanted, so we started a discussion on factions, which moved to a discussion on virtue, and then to liberty. My Machiavellian beliefs are shocking for Tobin to hear apparently because every time I said something he told me I was breaking his heart. Maybe I just need to wait until we get to Florence with Petrie and are studying Machiavelli. After class Elli and I went to Campo de’Fiori to buy t-shirts, and the guy selling to us was super nice, and they were only 5euro so I didn’t haggle with him. Then we started walking toward the restaurant we wanted to eat at because Elli remembered it from when she was little when all of the sudden we ran into Petrie. Literally! He was at a payphone and turned around and we recognized him and were shocked. It was lucky too because he was lost and had just arrived, so we showed him the Accent center, and then he came with us out to eat. He had a hard time keeping up with us, not being used to the traffic and amount of walking. We also gave him a crash course in what it’s like to be in Italy, and told him about our adventure from Monday. He paid for our lunch which was very nice, and then we dropped him off at Castel Sant’Angelo hoping he could find his way back because we were headed to the Vatican Museums. There was no line that we could skip with our tickets, and it was all very confusing inside. Finally we found where we were supposed to go and found audioguides, then we began to just wander. We somehow missed most of the first level, but we had really no designs to see anything in the museum specifically except the Sistine Chapel. We did find a bust of Socrates, and we used our audioguides to learn a couple interesting things. We wandered through the Etruscan museum since we know who the Etruscans were through reading Livy. The Hall of Tapestries was interesting because there were these HUGE tapestries on the walls depicting scenes of people killing babies and children! It was absolutely horrific, and we just sort of walked through with our mouths open in a grimace. Next we walked through a room that had giant maps on the wall of all the regions of Italy. The coolest part was the two maps of all of Italy from now and antiquity. Elli and I were able to find cities from Livy like Veii and Tarquinia. We kept wandering and wandering through halls with soooo much art, it was crazy! There was a series of four rooms painted by Raphael which took him eight years, and they were absolutely incredible. Every inch of the room was filled with immense detail. Finally we made it to the Sistine Chapel, which was very disappointing. The best part is the wall depicting Judgment Day, but the ceiling is so far away it’s impossible to admire it properly. And I’m not quite sure why the image of God and Adam’s hands is so famous because it’s only one small and relatively unimpressive part of a much larger fresco with more striking images, in my opinion. It was also annoying because the guards were shouting the entire time for everyone to be silent and to not take pictures, but it’s impossible to get a large crowd like that to be silent, especially when people are giving tours. I would much rather look at a close up picture of the ceiling than stand there breaking my neck trying to see the detail. We left Sistine Chapel, then wandered through a little of the Vatican library, then decided to call it quits after about two to three hours in the museum. We walked back to Argentina, then hopped on the tram home. We had a group dinner planned for 8pm, so we showered and started getting ready, and Elli skyped her family. We made our way over to the restaurant at about 7:30pm and everyone was already there when we got there, except Petrie of course. We had a choice between five dishes, and I chose cabonnera, which was good but I didn’t like the ham in it. We also got Tiramisu and lemon drinks for desert! While we were eating there was a tv playing videos like AFV and it was hilarious. We were laughing so hard from them! After dinner we all walked down to St. Peter’s to take a group picture, which was a clusterfuck but we succeeded! Then we ran home really quickly to change. At 12:30am we were ready to go and made for Scholar’s, a bar that everyone else in our group went to. When we got there a bunch of our group was already there. It was me, Elli, Kari, Mike, David, Brandon, Joe, Dylan, Amanda, Brad, Chris, Don, and Andrew, but the last three left pretty soon after we arrived. We hung around talking to randomly different people, and I met some Minnesotans and they knew where Prior Lake was and one was from Eagan and the other one’s roommate went to my high school. It was so exciting! We also met some Roman guys who couldn't say my name. After a while we decided it was time to go home, and we had to walk all the way home because the tram was no longer running. It was a good night hanging out in Rome and finally meeting some people not from our group.
Last day of class with Tobin Craig! He basically let us talk about whatever we wanted, so we started a discussion on factions, which moved to a discussion on virtue, and then to liberty. My Machiavellian beliefs are shocking for Tobin to hear apparently because every time I said something he told me I was breaking his heart. Maybe I just need to wait until we get to Florence with Petrie and are studying Machiavelli. After class Elli and I went to Campo de’Fiori to buy t-shirts, and the guy selling to us was super nice, and they were only 5euro so I didn’t haggle with him. Then we started walking toward the restaurant we wanted to eat at because Elli remembered it from when she was little when all of the sudden we ran into Petrie. Literally! He was at a payphone and turned around and we recognized him and were shocked. It was lucky too because he was lost and had just arrived, so we showed him the Accent center, and then he came with us out to eat. He had a hard time keeping up with us, not being used to the traffic and amount of walking. We also gave him a crash course in what it’s like to be in Italy, and told him about our adventure from Monday. He paid for our lunch which was very nice, and then we dropped him off at Castel Sant’Angelo hoping he could find his way back because we were headed to the Vatican Museums. There was no line that we could skip with our tickets, and it was all very confusing inside. Finally we found where we were supposed to go and found audioguides, then we began to just wander. We somehow missed most of the first level, but we had really no designs to see anything in the museum specifically except the Sistine Chapel. We did find a bust of Socrates, and we used our audioguides to learn a couple interesting things. We wandered through the Etruscan museum since we know who the Etruscans were through reading Livy. The Hall of Tapestries was interesting because there were these HUGE tapestries on the walls depicting scenes of people killing babies and children! It was absolutely horrific, and we just sort of walked through with our mouths open in a grimace. Next we walked through a room that had giant maps on the wall of all the regions of Italy. The coolest part was the two maps of all of Italy from now and antiquity. Elli and I were able to find cities from Livy like Veii and Tarquinia. We kept wandering and wandering through halls with soooo much art, it was crazy! There was a series of four rooms painted by Raphael which took him eight years, and they were absolutely incredible. Every inch of the room was filled with immense detail. Finally we made it to the Sistine Chapel, which was very disappointing. The best part is the wall depicting Judgment Day, but the ceiling is so far away it’s impossible to admire it properly. And I’m not quite sure why the image of God and Adam’s hands is so famous because it’s only one small and relatively unimpressive part of a much larger fresco with more striking images, in my opinion. It was also annoying because the guards were shouting the entire time for everyone to be silent and to not take pictures, but it’s impossible to get a large crowd like that to be silent, especially when people are giving tours. I would much rather look at a close up picture of the ceiling than stand there breaking my neck trying to see the detail. We left Sistine Chapel, then wandered through a little of the Vatican library, then decided to call it quits after about two to three hours in the museum. We walked back to Argentina, then hopped on the tram home. We had a group dinner planned for 8pm, so we showered and started getting ready, and Elli skyped her family. We made our way over to the restaurant at about 7:30pm and everyone was already there when we got there, except Petrie of course. We had a choice between five dishes, and I chose cabonnera, which was good but I didn’t like the ham in it. We also got Tiramisu and lemon drinks for desert! While we were eating there was a tv playing videos like AFV and it was hilarious. We were laughing so hard from them! After dinner we all walked down to St. Peter’s to take a group picture, which was a clusterfuck but we succeeded! Then we ran home really quickly to change. At 12:30am we were ready to go and made for Scholar’s, a bar that everyone else in our group went to. When we got there a bunch of our group was already there. It was me, Elli, Kari, Mike, David, Brandon, Joe, Dylan, Amanda, Brad, Chris, Don, and Andrew, but the last three left pretty soon after we arrived. We hung around talking to randomly different people, and I met some Minnesotans and they knew where Prior Lake was and one was from Eagan and the other one’s roommate went to my high school. It was so exciting! We also met some Roman guys who couldn't say my name. After a while we decided it was time to go home, and we had to walk all the way home because the tram was no longer running. It was a good night hanging out in Rome and finally meeting some people not from our group.
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| Group Picture at St. Peter's |
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| The girls ready to go out |
