La mia vita a Firenze: November 17, 2011

November 17, 2011

This morning we got up at 6:00, got ready, finished packing and caught the bus into town around 7:20. We met our group at the station at 7:50 and our train departed for Rome at 8:10. We took a fast train so it was really nice and, of course, fast. It only took about an hour and a half, unlike the four hours it takes by bus. We arrived in Rome around 9:45 and had vans bring us to the hotel. We got our rooms and had about 45 minutes to settle in and eat our box lunches that our host parents packed for us. Our rooms are nice and Becca, Nikki and my beds are all pushed together so it’s almost like last weekend :)

We met back up with our group in the lobby at 11:30 and walked to the Vatican. It was an absolutely beautiful day—sunshine and warm! When we got there we toured St. Peter’s and it was fun to be back and see it again after a few years! After that we headed around the basilica to a special side entrance for our special tour of the mausoleum, which is a difficult tour to get. Our tour guide was a second year seminary student from Oklahoma and was fantastic! He really reminded me of Elder Price’s character for the musical, The Book of Mormon. He was very animated and told great stories. When he told the story of Peter’s bones being found, we were on the edge of our seats. As part of the tour we even got to see the bones of St. Peter. It was a wonderful tour and I’m so glad Jodie brought us.

After our tour, we headed over to the Vatican Museums. When there we could walk around with Jodie or Gail or wander around by ourselves, but I chose to go with Jodie, which was wonderful. We walked around for about two hours, in a group of about eight, focusing especially on Raphael and, of course, the Sistine Chapel. It was really quite spectacular, even the second time around; and, of course, more interesting with Jodie who knows absolutely everything. We were still in the chapel around 5:45, right before it closed when, all of a sudden, they turned on all the lights to illuminate it. Jodie was so excited because apparently they never do that and she’d never seen them do it. Then we saw why—the coach who led Italy to their World Cup victory had walked in with a group of nicely dressed people. All the museum guards/curators had their pictures taken with him and were very excited :) Then they even let them take photos. Since we were the only others remaining in the chapel, they disregarded us so we got to snap a few photos as well!

After that we headed out and headed home. Erin, Katie, Leah and I decided to have an “early” dinner (6:30) at a place both Jodie and Gail recommended. It was a cute place and we had delicious (and inexpensive) food. I had a huge, delicious plate of gnocchi and shared chocolate mousse with Leah. We had a lovely time but headed back to the hotel around 7:30 because Leah and Katie were very tired. I got back to find Nikki and Becca getting ready to head out for dinner with a group and decided to join them. We ended up going to the same restaurant, which I was totally fine with, and I just got a cup of tea. We had a lot of fun :) After that we headed back to the hotel because we were all so exhausted. Nikki, Becca and I got ready for bed, watched some TV and then read before going to bed around 10:30. We will be so well rested for tomorrow, which will be another very busy day!