Although we could all do whatever we wanted, every student chose to use this day as a time to visit the Vatican City.
To get to the Vatican, students hopped aboard the Metro (the underground subway) and traveled to the middle of Rome. The Metro was quite the experience - and it was extremely packed.
Upon arriving at the Vatican, students broke off into smaller groups. All of the groups eventually had to go through security (including metal detectors) to enter into the Vatican. During this security check, one of the groups got a brief glimpse of the Pope driving through the city.
In the city, students were able to tour the St. Peter's square, the museums, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. A couple of students (including myself), along with Dr. Davis, even had the rare opportunity to tour underneath St. Peter's Basilica, where Constantine's original Basilica was built. We even went lower, to the ancient necropolis, which was a catacomb of ancient tombs.
To discuss this experience, I'm going to let another student, Joey Fazio, continue the blog.
The Scavi Tour
Going underneath St. Peter's was one of the coolest and most humbling experiences ever. This was part of the Scavi Tour, which we signed up for in early January due its extremely high demand. On the day of our visit, we followed our Italian tour guide into the depths of the necropolis as we viewed many tombs, ruins, and Christian art pieces. On our way down, though, it was interesting to take note that we passed through a series of thick glass doors. These doors operated in an efficient manner, opening and closing immediately before and after the first and last persons. This was a modernized attempt at preservation for a historic site. Shutting the doors quickly and having checkpoints of doors between burial sections kept the humidity at 99%. While the site was kept in pristine condition, we were not, as most of us were sweating and taking deep gulps of air as we were amazed by the history revealed to us.
For me, the highlight of the tour was near the end. This was when we saw the bones of St. Peter. This was the humbling part because we realized that we were in the presence of the actual remains from someone who spent his every waking moment with Jesus Christ. We were invited to stay and pray or be silent for a couple minutes by his bones. This was definitely a tour that I will never forget and an experience that I recommend to anyone that plans to visit the Vatican. This is a layer beneath a layer beneath another layer that many people never even get the chance to see. We are very fortunate to have witnessed these rare sites and to have caught a glimpse of the Pope! What an incredible Vatican experience we had!
- Joey Fazio
Some more locations were visited (or revisited), and our final dinners were eaten (some us returned to our favorite restaurants from earlier. I had the exact same meal at the exact same place from the night before).
The next morning, we all woke up bright and early to check out of the hotel and head to the airport. This time, we traveled for about two and half hours aboard EasyJet to arrive in London. We landed about one hour and 30 minutes outside of London, which required us to bus our way through small towns to get to our hotel in central London. We arrived at our first hotel (which we only stay in for one night), and spent the rest of the day relaxing and catching up on sleep. Some students also took advantage of the laundry facilities in the hotel during the free time.
London looks like it will be just as promising as Rome! I'll keep you up to speed with all the adventures happening in our second city.
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