Part 2 of this mini-series continues with our second day in Rome, when we toured the Vatican Museums and the awe-inspiring St. Peter's Basilica. Again, it was so cool to see everything I've seen in textbooks or talked about during lectures right before me! When we walked into the Sistine Chapel I thought to myself, "Is this real life? Am I really standing right underneath this amazing work of art? Is that really Adam about to touch God?!" And then when we walked into St. Peter's my thought process didn't change much! To think about the architectural advancements made back then, the care that was taken into the decoration and the layout... It blows my mind! And then it hurts to think about how, more often than not, building buildings today is all about building it cheaply, cutting costs, and not caring about the details. What changed in our society? Why must it always be about the money? Anyway, that's a rant for another day, but regardless everything was so beautiful, and I felt honored to be able to see all this history in person.
After Rome, we trained down to Pompei to check out the ruins there. I was especially excited about seeing Pompei (I will use the Italian spelling) because the eruption of Mount Vesuvius has always been one of those disasters from history that has intrigued me (in addition to the Titanic). Just thinking about being so close to the eruption gives me chills! Although the city of Herculaneum received most of the lava damage, it was very interesting to see how the damage from the layers of ash effected the town and the people inside. The size of the area they have excavated is much larger than I expected, and our tour guide explained the differences in the structure of the ruins and what they would have been like back in the day. Very interesting stuff, and it was neat to be able to walk around down the little streets of ancient Pompei.
On our way back to Firenze, we stopped in Napoli with the hopes of seeing the Pompei exhibit at the Architectural Museum there, but the exhibit had closed before we got there unfortunately. We still enjoyed seeing the artifacts in the museum, and then were able to catch an earlier train back home! (Ahh, I just called Firenze home!!! I'm going to miss Florence very much when this program ends...)
I want to go back and explore Rome for longer and not in the pouring rain one day, but I still feel like I got the most out of my time there!
Ciao for now!
--Caroline
