When in Rome - Daily Diary: St. Peters and Presentations Begin!

We awoke early, as most days in Rome, met at the portone (after a frantic cornetto, bowl of Chocoballs, or a simple cappuccino), and began to walk.

Here we are meeting. Everyone looks tired. Roman apparently enjoyed an orange (arancia!). Lisa told us wise words.

Here is a picture of Bennett waiting to begin our trek. Ha ha, Bennett I caught you on film!

We walked to the Vatican - again! Except this time we took the route of pilgrims, very sleepy and very hot pilgrims. The pilgrimage took us down some winding, peach-tinged streets; fairly characteristic of Rome, but still gorgeous to me. :) I forget the topic of conversations but I imagine they consisted of something like this:

"Zzz."
"Zzz?"
"Daniel, how late did you stay up working on your presentation?"
"I love Rome."
"I wish I had more cappuccino."
"Rebecca, haven't you had seven cappuccinos today already?"
"Das hell bier!"

"Look everyone, a Madonelle!!" (There were many madonelles on the walk-- often they were used to mark the way of pilgrimages -- tune in to MY blog too see a soon-to-come essay detailing the histories of madonelles and their importance in Rome today!)

The point of the pilgrimage was made apparently as we rounded the bend near Castel San Angelo, and took in the entire view. My tiny little point-and-shoot can't exactly capture the grandness of the view, but here are my attempts:

Maggie ruined some really great action photos of more walking by sticking her hand in front of my camera. :( I will not include them here. Despite this, we soon made it to the piazza!

Carmen gave a fantastic presentation on St. Peter's piazza. She had us walk around to specific focal points, in which the perspective kept you from seeing the second rows of columns. I also learned it is hard to get a good picture of people speaking -- sorry Carmen. :( Lisa told us a great story about when she heard the new Pope elect announcement-- it's pretty hard to imagine the piazza so filled, or even for all the bells in Rome to be ringing.

We next headed into St. Peter's Basilica itself! Lisa avoided arrest, we got to go through the super sweet back-entrance fast line, and we eventually made it all through skirt check. Can you see our sweet earpieces in the photo??

Into the basilica -- flash was allowed, as the paintings had all been replaced with mosaic copies to avoid further water damage from the nearby Tiber (you pesky river you).

To say the least, this is a big church. They had markers on the ground for all the lengths of the other so-called "big" churches in the world.

Daniel gave a fantastic presentation on it. He got to use the microphone, and we all got to enjoy his powerful presentation voice.

We wandered about, Lisa told stories about the saints, and we were all impressed with the amount of important dead people who were chillin' there. I hope you took pictures, because my point'n'shoot didn't do so well in the dark.

We sadly left and optimistically began a sojourn to Castel San Angelo -- but it was closed on Mondays. :( No view for us. Instead, as a happy alternative, we walked back!

We walked.

And walked.

And walked some more.

In Piazza Farnese, we saw the pigeon lady again. Eww.

As hungry pilgrims returned from our journey, we split and ate lunch. The guys ate Forno sandwiches in a self-proclaimed manly silence:

Then some Rome Center time and project work before actual project presentation.

Novel group went first for Kathie's class -- YEAAH GUYS! Good job!

At this point, I believe it was about 4:30 (Honors kids: going over the presentation time limit since 6th grade!), and everyone was pretty darn hungry, so dinner plans burst into action. I believe the guys made purple chicken (versus green or blue??) and Trastevere girls cooked some delish dinners for themselves as well. I went on a journey for madonelle pictures (which you can see, coming soon, to THIS BLOG) in Trastevere, before joining my own lovely roommates for meat sauce pasta!

And then, in classic Honors kid style, we all had a library party in preparation for tomorrow's presentations. Now now, this was no ordinary library party! This one had library monitors, AC, and a sweet visit from the professors! Honors Rome knows how to kick it on a Monday night!

I documented as best I could:

Erik as library monitor.