Finally, A Day to Myself

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Thank God for little miracles. Because Meghan's friends from Galway were in Rome, she was going to sleep in and then meet up with them. Which meant I had a whole day to do whatever I wanted without having to look over my shoulder for Meghan, who consistently walked a pace or so behind me. Probably giving me death glares.

The day started off not so great because we got locked in the mobile home. The carpet had gotten stuck under the door and we couldn't unlock the door at all. Even from the outside. And I know this because I reached around through the window to try and unlock it with the key. Finally, I just jumped out of the window and walked down to the desk to let them fix it. They called someone and he had it fixed by the time I was back up there to get my bag. I left the key with Meghan because she was going to be in the room for a while longer and I went down to the desk to pay my balance. The cash register is only open from eight in the morning until eight at night, and I thought I'd be back after that and we'd have to leave before eight the next morning in order to get to St Peter's at a time when we could get in line and get a good seat. Apparently, Meghan missed the register hours memo, but we'll get to that later.

I had a very nice discussion with the woman at the desk about Catholicism. We agreed on a lot of points. She also believed that priests should be allowed to marry, which we agreed would decrease the number of sex scandals. I also think that women should be allowed to become priests. It's already allowed in other branches of Christianity, so why not? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that only men can be priests. In the course of our discussion, we also talked about other ways the Church needs to update. The woman really liked John Paul II and the reforms he was introducing in the church before his death, and she was concerned that Benedict wouldn't continue with those progressive reforms.

Eventually, I had to get going, but I really enjoyed our conversation. At the end, I paid my balance and said "grazzi," to which she replied "grazzi te," which is pretty much like saying thank you too. Then she caught herself and looked a little embaressed, but I thought it was cool.

My first stop of the day was Pincio Hilll, which overlooks Piazza dell Popolo and has amazing views, especially early in the day. I spend about two hours up there just walking and taking pictures. It felt completely seperate from the city, kind of like the Palatine Hill did. Up there, it was really nice and shady, a good break from the hot sun. There were also a lot of runners, bikers, and dogs about. Then I walked along the Via Belvedere to the Spanish Steps.

Today the Spanish Steps had all their flowers out, and even though there were still a lot of people there, it was definitely much better than the last time I had been here. It was also relatively early, so there weren't quite as many people as had been there earlier in the week.

On the way to the metro, I got a gelato. This time, the flavors were baccio and pine nut. The pine nut was really, really good. It tasted just like Mom's Christmas cookies. And the girl that served it was extremely happy and chipper.

I took the metro down to San Giovanni in Laterno because I didn't feel like traipsing across the city again. I have to say, I think this might have been my favorite church in Rome. It was grandiose, surely, but it was also tasteful. So many of the big churches got into the whole "let's just make everything gold" that they forgot to also make it beautiful. San Giovanni was gorgeous. There is also a cloister attached to the church, and I went in the courtyard there to look around. It was another one of those havens that was away from the city and all the hustle and bustle of so many people. I have to say, it was one of those beautifully tanquil places, and I'm so happy that I found it.

After a brief lunch break on San Giovanni's stairs, I decided to walk over to the Capitoline Museum. This was one of the ones that Barbara recommended that I see, and she's usually really good about which musuems to see and which to skip.

The Capitoline was pretty darn cool. They had a lot of old statues, but there weren't a lot of paintings. I'm more of a fan of paintings, just because some of them are of places I've been to or things I've seen, and I like to read about what the artist was trying to capture in that particular painting. I have to say, the Capitoline was much bigger than I expected. I'm glad I took the time and went there. It even managed to capture my attention for a few hours (usually I duck out after an hour and a half).

Since it was still early in the day, I read some of my book by the Piazza Venezia. I managed to get pretty far in it, which was impressive because it was all in German. Then I got a call from Matt, which was so nice because I hadn't talked to him for a few days. After that, it was getting late enough to consider dinner, so I wandered over toward the Pantheon and watched a little girl playing on a ramp for a long while. She was really cute. :-)

Then I got a text from Meghan inviting me to dinner with her and her friends over by the Colosseum. I figured, why not? and started on my way over. Dinner was good, the pasta was more like homemade and the wine was nice. Afterward, we went for gelato. I got black cherry and Bounty, which is kind of like Almond Joy. As we were saying our goodbyes, one of her friends told us to stick together and not seperate again. It was like we were twelve years old. I think he got the *eyebrow* for that. Mostly because that wasn't the only jibe that was aimed in my direction during dinner and gelato.

But then we went back to CFab since it was going to be a very early morning, we needed to get o bed early. As it was, Meghan had forgotten to pay her balance earlier and was going to try and do it that night. Since it was after eight, of course they wouldn't let her pay. Duh. Someone at the desk told her that she could pay in the morning, but I don't think they expected us very early in the morning. Either way, I was all good, so I went back to the camper and took a shower and packed my things.