The past few days have been very painful when on a plane and very busy when here in Rome!!!
We ended up being a few hours late to Rome thanks to fog at Dubai, was really not fun after a 17 hour flight there and no sleep!!! The airport in Dubai was really quite amazing, I have never been somewhere quite as huge!!! We actually had to catch a train from one end of the airport to where our gate was located... That is how large it is!! The highlight of the stop over was the free wifi and the cheese covered chips for breakfast... Healthy, I know!!!
After finally getting to Rome yesterday afternoon I had my first experience through customs as an EU citizen. Needless to say, it was extremely underwhelming, with the customs man not even looking at the picture page of my passport! They were so very relaxed!
When we finally arrived at the British School we had the chance to relax, just for a little while before dinner, which was the highlight of the day, having the opportunity to lie horizontally was the highlight of the day! Sadly, our little rest wasn't enough to stay awake during the director's speech, I fell asleep three or four times while trying to listen to him, the lecture was actually very interesting!!
After a good night's sleep, it was time for our first day in Rome, and it will be hard to top it!!!
We went to the Vatican and had the opportunity to go down into the necropolis to see all the tombs, exactly how they were 2000 years or so ago. As you'd know, St. Peter is buried there too since it is his basilica and all.. We didn't get to go into his tomb, but we did have that chance to do so for about three of them. It was such an amazing opportunity, being able to walk into a room, with sarcophagi that have never been opened and being able to touch it all and see everything as it was before/at the time of Constantine! Sadly we couldn't take photos, which is a real shame considering how beautiful some of the wall paintings and mosaics were. My personal favourite was a peacock mosaic in a family tomb of a rich Roman family.
After viewing the family tombs, we caught a glimpse of St. Peter's tomb in the distance and then when we got closer, we saw the boxes in which his bones are supposed to be, it was quite a surreal experience knowing that they belonged to someone from the Bible and that he was killed very near by.
After viewing the bones we went into St. Peter's and it was just absolutely jaw-dropping to go from such humble little tombs family tombs (which were still incredibly impressive)to this amazingly huge space!!! There are no words to describe how I felt besides flabbergasted and astounded and overwhelmed, I actually teared up when we stepped up into it. After we wandered for a while we went up to the Vatican archives and saw some incredibly old codexes, books and a frieze depicting scenes from the life of St. Peter. The most exciting part of the archives was seeing original letters from Michelangelo and Bernini! That was again, a surreal moment, it made the two very prolific artists seem so human and close! After our Vatican adventure we had lunch and walked to the Ara Pacis for the rest of the afternoon. While it isn't my favourite monument, it was still enjoyable. Anyway, that was the end of our first, exciting day! Tomorrow will be full of fun times and more amazing things to see!
Hope you enjoy the random assortment of pictures :)
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