Jack takes Europe: Days Four through Six

Roma :-)

Colosseum

Making a wish at the Trevi Fountain

Spanish Steps (not the new sunglasses-- Didn't want to ruin them/lose them/scratch them/break them the first day!)

Okay, so I have to apologize for being a blog delinquent the past few days. I’ll try to make this one pretty long to make up for it :-)

So Saturday was our trip to the Vatican, which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. We walked over to the steps in front of the Musei Vaticani (Vatican museum) and met up with our tour. This tour was really well set-up and I highly recommend them to anyone going to Rome. It was an English-speaking tour guide (and not “English speaking” like a lot of tours you find—this girl was from Washington, D.C. and has been living in Rome for four year). There were 14 other people on the tour, so it was a nice size. We also got headsets and our guide had a microphone so we could wander off a little bit and still hear her. Very good planning on their part.

We went in the museum and started our tour by going through rooms with different paintings and sculptures. We also went into the courtyards and learned about different architectural things and the significance of things that we never would have thought of. (Fun fact #1: All of the white sculptures that we associate with ancient Rome used to have brightly colored paint on them, but the paint wore off over the years.)

We also got to see the Papal apartments, which were very cool. They were all decorated by Raphael and the art on the walls was absolutely incredible. My favorite was School of Athens which is one of Raphael’s famous works. It’s a scene of a lot of different philosophers and innovators talking and working. The really cool thing that we learned is that Raphael made people he admired the inspiration for the different people. For example, his Plato has Leonardo DaVinci’s face because he was a huge fan of DaVinci and wanted to honor him. My favorite part, though, was that he gave Michaelangelo’s face to one philosopher who was notoriously arrogant and bad-tempered. Apparently Michaelangelo was a really mean, cocky guy and that he and Raphael did not get along at all.

After the Papal apartments, we got to go into the Sistine Chapel. It was absolutely gorgeous and even cooler than I could have imagined. It was really weird to think that Michaelangelo didn’t even know how to paint when he started painting the ceiling. He just kind of went for it and created that. Maybe he had a right to be a mean, cocky guy. In the Sistine Chapel we also got to see where the Cardinals meet to elect the new Pope. We got to stand where they put the fireplace during the elections and got to look up at the window that the smoke comes out of to signal if a new Pope has been elected. That was definitely one of the highlights.

After the Sistine Chapel, we went to St. Peter’s Basilica. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It’s the biggest church in the world (the length of two football fields) and is just incredible. We got to go by St. Peter’s tomb, which is in the middle of the church. Above his tomb are inscribed (in Latin) the words “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,” the words Jesus said to Peter that ended up starting the Catholic Church. So, so, so, so cool to see. When we were done with St. Peter’s, the Vatican tour was over and we decided to go get some dinner and then head back to the hotel.

The next day, we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and headed out for another day in Rome. We got off the hotel’s bus and starting walking to the Spanish steps. On the way, we passed the Gucci store. Now, there is this one style of Gucci sunglasses I’ve wanted for about two years, but I always tell myself that they’re impractical and that I shouldn’t get them. But we were at Gucci. In Rome. And they had them. So I bought them. Very unlike me, but I’m glad I did it!

After shopping, we went to the Spanish steps, sat on them for awhile, and then went to the Trevi Fountain and made some wishes by throwing coins into the fountain over our shoulders. The fountain was really pretty and much bigger than I expected. Then we got some lunch and started heading over to the Colosseum. The Colosseum was enormous and a very, very neat thing to see. We were laughing at the number of men dressed as gladiators around it, trying to earn some money by letting people take pictures with them.

The next day was Monday, which was a big travel day. We flew from Rome to Madrid and then from Madrid to Granada. It was an awesome trip, but it feels good to be back to familiarity. It won’t surprise anyone to know that I love continuity and familiarity. It’s exciting that Granada’s starting to be familiar and that I’m getting more and more settled as time goes on.

Today also marks 6 weeks in Granada. In some ways, it’s gone by really fast, and in other ways it feels like I’ve been here forever. I’ve got a lot of great stuff coming up, though, so hopefully the time should be fast and exciting! Next weekend, I go to Paris for four days! I am so excited to get to see Meghan and the Hartsells and my friend Carolyn!! That should be a great trip. I’m really glad we planned it for then, because that weekend is Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day at U of I, and it’s going to be a hard day to be away. Don’t get me wrong, I’m making some awesome friends here that I love to death, but I still really, really, really miss my friends back home!! And days when something really fun is going on down at school are definitely the hardest to be away. I think I’m gonna try to tell myself that I would have to work on Unofficial anyway and it wouldn’t be thaaaat fun for me. Right? Keep telling myself that? :-)

The weekend after Paris, we have a school-sponsored trip to Córdoba, which is a city around Granada. It’s just a day trip on Friday, but it should be fun and pretty interesting. Then a week after that, Matt comes to visit!! It’s going to be so so so great to see him! After Matt comes, I’ve got about five days before my cousin Lauren comes to visit! I have to figure out our travel plans for sure this weekend, but we’re thinking we’re going to do a few days in Ireland and then a few days in the Canary Islands, with a few days in Granada on either side of traveling. The Canaries are Spanish-owned islands in the Atlantic, and they’re apparently amazing! Lauren will be here until the 14^th of April, and then I’ve got a week and a half until our trip to London, which should be awesome (I mean seeing Les Mis on the West End is awesome enough in itself for me!) Then I’ll have two weeks of school, a farewell weekend, and then I’ll be coming home!

It should be a really great eleven weeks. It’s so nice to have things that you are really excited about to look forward to. Study abroad is really cool, but it can be really overwhelming if you don’t break it up with visits and little trips, so it’s really beneficial to plan things. My friend Brittany, who I’ve known since the days at The Lane School and who was in my sorority, studied in Granada two years ago, and that was the advice she gave me. It was the absolute best advice I could have gotten. If I didn’t have these things to look forward to, I’d probably be completely overwhelmed, but they’re making it much easier and allowing me to really enjoy the experience. So that’s my study abroad tip for the day!

Okay, well I think I’ve followed through on my promise to make this entry a long one—perhaps a little excessively long! (Sorry!) Hope everyone’s doing well—Miss everyone back home!