Last Day in Rome

Wow…what can I even say about it? Rome turned out to be one of the coolest experiences I have ever had. Flavia was just extremely welcoming and so much fun to hang out with. I actually didn't meet her until 5 pm yesterday.

Before meeting up with Flavia, I decided that I wanted to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art and Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (a church with relics of the passion, but I'll get to that in a second). It was really easy to visit the National Gallery - it was located on the edge of the Villa Borghese, which was absolutely beautiful. The gallery had great works from Italian artists such as Claudio Cintoli and Alberto Burri, but they also had works from folks such as Mondrian and Van Gogh. Very thought-provoking, overall, though some of it just was over my head.

Trying to get to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme turned out to be tricky, and I instead ended up at San Giovanni (Saint John's) Basilica. But that was absolutely gorgeous - the ceiling was basically pure gold, and the frescos were also quite beautiful. I asked one of the sisters at the church about how to get to Santa Croce, and she gave me a map (what a novel idea, a map…I forgot mine at the hotel). I hurried over to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and I walked in expecting to see the relics right in the main sanctuary, but they were actually in a small side chapel.

It was kind of an awe-inducing experience to stand in front of one of the nails that they used to put Jesus on the cross, as well as some of the thorns, part of the inscription that was over his head, and pieces of the actual cross as well as the good thief's cross. If you go to Rome, go to this church! It wasn't crowded at all, and I think it's one of those things that you need somebody to tell you about (thanks to Molly's art history professor for that).

In the evening, I went on a walk with Flavia to different spots in the city - Venezia Square, Spagna Square (and the Spanish Steps), and this spot where we could look out and see basically all of Rome, but I forgot the name. After grabbing a sweatshirt from Flavia's house, we grabbed her motor scooter from near the colosseum and went to pizza with Flavia's friends and my friend Molly, who brought her friend, John. That was really fun - we had great fried appetizers, pizza, and pasta. The conversations were also really hilarious because half the table couldn't speak very much English and half the table knew almost no Italian, with the exception of John. I hated that I had to say goodbye to Molly again, because it had already been basically four months since I had seen her and now it will be another 3 months or so… It's a little ridiculous how quickly time passes!

One of the coolest parts of the whole day was riding on the scooter with Flavia past all of these famous sites that were so beautifully lit up at night, including the colosseum. It was like a movie, honestly, because it was so darn cool. It's something that I'm not going to forget very soon...