Trip to Rome Day 2 and 2.5

San Giovani....inside with GIANT apostle statues!

DAY 2! We woke up at seemed like the crack of dawn and caught the shuttle to the train station. We had a full day ahead of us in Rome and since it was Sunday first thing first was going to Mass. We were planning to go to this church called St Giovanni (the Popes Church) but we weren’t super sure where it was. So we got on the metro knowing roughly what stop to get off at. Anyhow we spotted this Nun on the metro with us and she seems to be getting off at the same stop as us. It was 8:45 in the morning so we thought, where else could she possibly be going on a Sunday but to mass. So like two ultra creepers we decided we would follow her! So from a safe distance we followed her a couple blocks and she led us right to a church. YEAH! Also it happened to be the church we wanted to visit anyway. What Providence!!!

After Mass we visited the Scala Sancta (sacred steps). This church holds the steps that Jesus walked up to be sentenced by Pilate. He climbed these steps just after having been flogged and scourged. The steps, made of marble, were taken from The Holy Land and reassembled at this church in Rome. They are covered by wood, but you can touch the marble and there are circular holes with a glass protective barrier that show the stains of Jesus’ blood onto the marble. People from all over the world ascend these stairs – there are 28 of them – on their knees, as a form of penance and prayer. As the saying goes...when in Rome...so Morgan and I climbed the steps in prayer. Beautiful, harder to do than I thought, but so worth it.

Statue of St Francis (of when he came to see the Pope in Rome)
located in the Piazza across from where we ate.

Time for breakfast. We found a corner shop and go some bread etc and I believe Morgan bought a very interesting peanut candy bar thing too. We then went to visit the church which had the relics of The Passion. They were enclosed in a glass case, and there was: thorns from the crown, pieces of wood from the cross, the inscription, and one of the nails from his hands.

We stayed in the church for a while and we prayed. Then we headed back to Vatican city to visit the St Peters Tomb because it was closed on Saturday. Also before we visited this last church we had to wait because mass was going on so we thought, why not have some Sunday morning gelato? Great decision on our part.  One thing I learned on this trip is that gelato is never a disappointment.

We had another go at St Peter’s square and saw the crypt where a bunch of the popes are including St Peter. It was wild. Well, wild in the very silent prayerful sense where you walk around and no one is talking and you just take it all in....you know that sort of wild!

We had two other things we wanted to see in Rome....The Coliseum and the Pantheon. One thing to know about Morgan and I is that both of us don’t really find it very necessary to travel with a map. The Coliseum is easy enough to find because there was a metro stop called that and sure enough when we walked out of the station..... BAM....there was the Coliseum. It is so huge! Way bigger than I imagined from pictures. Its costs far too much to go in and you totally get the jist from walking around the outside. They also have men dressed as Roman gladiators walking around the outside. An interesting tourist touch, I thought.

We noticed that the Pantheon was in the general area of the Coliseum from the big city map in the metro station so we figured its huge and famous so it would easy to find. We were quite wrong. But Morgan and I make a killer team....she asks people where to go and people are nice to her because she is lovely and friendly and I make use of the directions that she obtains to get us to where we are going. No map needed! Actually on our trek to the Pantheon we met several people with maps who had no idea where they were going so i think we were better off without the sub-par tourist maps that they all had. Here is some video documenting our search for the pantheon.

This night was the only time we actually ate out anywhere and had real food on our trip. It wasn’t fancy or anything but compared to eating only crackers, cheese and apples it was amazing. Morgan and I had pasta with cream sauce , peas and mushrooms. We even splurged and got wine with dinner and cake at the end. Pasta in Italy is better. Enough said.

One of my favourite pictures...I believe it is
some Dominicans and Franciscans being
hanged. I know...morbid, but a beautiful
painting! 

Monday morning we checked out of Castel Fusano and then we went to the Vatican Museum. We went really early so we only waited about 30 minutes to get tickets, which apparently isn’t that bad.  We did a speed tour of it because on this day we were also going to travel all the way to Assisi and hopefully see some of it before dark. The Vatican Museum was totally art overwhelming and frankly me trying to describe any of it would just no do any of it justice. My vocabulary just isn’t that well developed. It was worth it to go though. We went really quickly through most of the statues parts and went straight the Sistine Chapel which I didn’t think would be that cool because I’ve seen pictures of it before but when I actually saw it, it blew my mind. I’ve never seen painting that looked so 3D before and so in perspective considering it was a ceiling. What a genius.

To deal with our art overload we treated ourselves to some gelato before we headed to the main station to figure out how to get to Assisi. Obviously we had not planned this in advance because that wouldn’t be any fun, now would it? Turns out it was pretty easy to figure out how to get there, expect for the fact that we had to switch trains, which we were unaware of. Luckily this somewhat scary looking man helped us find our next train that would take us on to Assisi. We felt bad for judging him based on his scary look L. Bye Bye Big noisy touristy Rome.......