I want gnochi

April 9th - Rome

Now, this morning I had set my alarm for 8am.  I wanted to shower to see if I could get a warm shower.  Since Morgan rarely ever has warm showers I was worried.  Well, it was freezing cold.  I only washed my hair and I did it very quickly.  I changed and did my usual get ready routine.  I grabbed my notebook, book, and ipod from Morgan's room where the girls were still sleeping and I headed into the kitchen.  I grabbed some cereal Morgan had bought and made myself comfortable, well as comfortable as I could get on the kitchen chairs.  Eventually I looked at my ipod, to change the time, and when I changed it to Rome time, I found out the real time.  I realized why no one was up yet, I had awoken at 7am instead of 8.  Eventually Morgan got up and joined me for a bit in the kitchen before getting ready and Kelsey eventually lingered out of the room as well.  We had our breakfast and were finally on our way.
Our first stop of the day was the Vatican Museum.  We weren't exactly expecting a long line, but as it is the beginning of tourist season, it was a pretty long line.  It took us an hour or a little more to get to the front of the museum, this is where I met up with Allison and Carissa and received my papers for a smoother ride into the UK.  So thankful to those girls!  Anyway, we got in and bought our tickets, thank you ISIC card, you got us a discount.  We walked in, not knowing how much time it was going to take us.  Since the last time morgan came it was free Sunday, very crowded, and some of the rooms were closed off.  There are many different rooms to the Vatican Museum, they have ones with statues and busts, they had a room full of statue animals.  They had some pretty awesome, huge marble bathtubs (that I want someday), they had an Egyptian room, too.  Almost right before going to the Sistine Chapel are the Raphael rooms.  In one of these rooms is the painting of the School of Athens.  I don't remember the whole story, but I think Michelangelo wasn't happy that he wasn't in it, so one time he snuck in and painted himself in the painting, and he painted himself larger than the other figures in it.  Sneaking son of a gun.  Then off we went following the crowd to the Sistine Chapel, as well as passing some rooms with more modern art.  Once in the Sistine Chapel, you, of course, can't help but look up at all times.  If the place had been empty I am sure I would have sat on the floor looking up at the ceiling, until that time comes I was having to strain my neck, almost touching my back, to get the best view of the ceiling.  We spent a little time in the Sistine Chapel admiring all the splendor that was around us and we headed out.  Now, to get out of the museum, it took us quite a while.  As well as there being large crowds and groups of school children, they take you through a couple more rooms full of art and then into the big gift shop.  We mostly passed by the other rooms and skipped the gift shop.  By the time we got out we were all pretty hungry.  We noticed a Burger King was a ways down so we stopped there for Kelsey.  We sat while she quickly ate her food, as we wouldn't have to wait so long, and then we headed to a gelato place a couple blocks down.  Kelsey and Morgan both got gelato while I got a crepe from next door.  It was pretty tasty.  We then headed to the street in front of the Vatican and Morgan and I got some pizza.  We decided to just concur most of the Vatican in one day.  Off we were to wait in line for security into St. Peter's Basilica and then off we were to see some dead popes.  St. Peter's Basilica was amazing.  It was so beautiful inside.  Besides the dead guys at least.  One of the first things you can see when entering is Michelangelo's Pieta.  Since the popes devoted their lives to the church, the church got full custody, pretty much full custody, of the dead popes body, so they like to embalm them and show them off to the public.  Some are quite old so they are black.  Or the church just doesn't want to tell us something.  Either one, crazy!  Some art that were on the walls were actually mosaics and not paintings, the work they did must have taken forever but it looks beautiful.  You can't even tell that it is a mosaic.  There was one room in the Vatican that you can go into and see a list of all the past popes.  It's pretty amazing to see how many popes there were in just one year.  Supposedly they liked to kill each other off, well when they could do that.  We walked all the way around, at least to where we could get to and we headed out.  We sat outside of Castle San Tangelo for a bit, which is the old Vatican prison, and this is where I ran into Kiley, my London roommate.  In the museum we also ran into a couple other people from the London program.  Rome really was the place to be, as other people from the program were there as well, we didn't run into them though.  We headed back to the apartment where we were going to take a short rest before supper.  It turned into a longer rest as Morgan wanted to see Matt and Amy's wedding pictures.  She loved most of them, if not all.  We then headed to supper.  We tried two different restaurants that Morgan had in mind, but both were going to be pretty long waits.  Instead we went to Bruchetto (Buchetto?) and got our delicious supper there.  Kelsey got a pizza while Morgan and I both got gnochi ei 4 formaggi, which is a potato in a four cheese sauce.  Oh my gosh was it delicious, and holy cow I have craved some ever since I had it!  After supper we headed back to the apartment where we pretty much went straight to bed.  Saturday is Kelsey's last full day with us so we still have a lot to do!  Cheers