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The Vatican: I have never seen so much Pope memorabilia in all my life. Inside the Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel, there were more gift shops selling Pope goods than there were nuns. I illegally took a picture of the God and Adam painting (what is its name?), which you can see here. We unfortunately only had about an hour to get through all of the museum, so I didn’t really know what I was looking at, which disturbs me because everything in there was so beautiful and I would have liked to know the significance of it all. Anyway, we went to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica, where I got awesome pictures of all of Rome. In order to get to the top of the cathedral, you have to climb something like 500 stairs and go up these tiny little curling staircases where you have to hold onto a rope instead of a railing. It was intense.
After that, Sarah and I went to get lunch and go shopping by ourselves – we were our own jefes for the day. There are so many Senegalese men that come to Italy and Spain from Senegal to sell their wares – usually fake designer bags and sunglasses. So we spent a good hour trying on sunglasses and then we took the Metro to the shopping district where we didn’t buy anything but THE MOST FANTASTIC FOOD I HAVE EVER EATEN. What made it so great was that we weren’t expecting it. First we got pizza with eggplant and mushrooms (sounds gross but it was exquisite), washed down with tropical mango Bacardi Breezers (our eyes popped out when we tasted them, we couldn’t stop talking about how good they were) and finished off with this tiny waffle cone thing with crème and raspberries and chocolate on the inside. We didn’t know the word for the tiny waffle cone thing so we decided to name it ourselves. We decided on the word “scapular” (I learned that word that day: it’s a Catholic necklace that guarantees you admission to heaven if you are wearing it when you die). Eating that little tiny waffle cone thing put us in heaven, thus the name scapular.
That night Sarah and I went out for a Coliseum Pub Crawl that they were advertising all around Rome. It was fun. We wanted to go home at four so our friends, these Australian Army guys who had a week off vacation from Afghanistan, flagged down a taxi. But it wasn’t really a taxi, it was a regular person in a beat-up silver Mercedes that charged twenty Euros to get where we were going. (Don’t worry Mom and Dad, we were fine) It was cool though, we drove right by the beautifully lit up Coliseum at night and I couldn’t believe I was there. We got home safe and sound and the guys ended up paying for it so that was fantastic.
So I have always heard “Ciao bella” but I never knew in what context it was used. Now I know that is basically used in every context (it’s mostly like “thanks” when said to a girl), and there was one instance in particular that I liked it’s usage. I was at the train supermarket and there was a little Italian lady buying some fruit and she started speaking Italian to me and asking me questions. I tried to help her even though I didn’t have a clue what she was saying, and somehow I figured out what she wanted and then I found the number of the fruit for her and she was so happy and spouted off some Italian and ended it with “Ciao bella!!!” and blew me a kiss and it made me feel like I did something good for my ancestors homeland!
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