St. Peter's Basilica & Rome Tour

5:00am local time. Wake up call. That’s right. Everyone woke up at 5am in order to be among the first to arrive at St. Peter’s Basilica where we celebrated Mass and marveled at the sheer size of the church. We were pretty much slack-jawed from the first moment of walking through the great portals. So many relics in one place was just overpowering! And everywhere you turned, a Mass was in session, so we couldn’t really turn anywhere without genuflecting. Everything was so grand and beautiful, I could almost hear the very heartbeat of the bride of Christ. We even encountered some Swiss guards, who allowed us to photograph them. What an amazing experience of being right at the core of the Catholic Church, where everything we believe in is summed up into one grand city. I’ll need to re-visit the Basilica again, and soon!

After our visit to St. Peter’s, we began our tour of Rome starting at St. Peter’s Square and wandering off into the many delightful streets and alleyways. We visited so many amazing places, including the Pantheon, the Church of St. Agnes where we were able to see the actual skull of St. Agnes herself, the church of St. Augustine where we visited St. Monica’s tomb and saw a couple of Caravaggio paintings. Exciting! We also visited Capitoline Hill and a couple of other Piazzas whose names escape me at the moment, but nonetheless they were all so charming. And by the way, the Roman water is the clearest, freshest most delicious water I have ever tasted! They had water fountains scattered everywhere throughout Rome so we were able to continuously fill up on water. We did stop to get some gelato which was absolutely delicious. I tasted mint chocolate chip, nutella, and a kind of java chocolate chip gelato.

  

I’m super pumped now for the semester to begin. We’ll be visiting the ancient Roman sites again very soon. I am already convinced about the validity of the notion that all who visit Rome are forever impacted by that experience. And it’s only day 2 on campus!