Holy Visits Can't Even Help AS Roma

This past weekend was again full of adventures, although this time I primarily stayed close to Rome. On Saturday, my Science and Religion class went to the Papal Summer Residence (Castel Gandolfo), which was really beautiful and quite peaceful about 30 minutes outside of Rome. The pope has an excellent view of a lake and all of Rome from his mountainside perch. We were there mainly to check out the massive telescopes under Vatican control because our class had just finished discussing Galileo and his controversy with the Catholic Church. It was a great opportunity to see something that not many people get to see. After getting back to Rome around 1:00 pm or so, Sean, Phil, and I checked out the Catacombs of San Callixtus. These catacombs were absolutely enormous: 500,000 tombs could fit into these 20 km of walkways up to 20 meters below the surface of the earth. Some of the early popes were buried there, but have since been removed. The Christians had to use this area from the time of Christ until about AD 312 when Constantine came to power and made Christianity the official state religion. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures and I didn't sneak any. After the catacombs, we hit up the Santa Scala, which means Holy Steps. These steps are supposedly the steps in which Jesus climbed at Pontius Pilate's place to receive his sentence (they can only trace them back as far as the 7th century). Today, they are all covered in wood so they can't be touched and you have to climb them on your knees, so of course we had to do it. Then, to complete our Christian adventures, we went to the Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which (alledgedly) has the remains of Jesus' cross, which was also awesome to see. If both of these were authentic, I consider myself blessed to have seen them, if they're frauds, then I'm just like every other tourist/pilgrim who has been cheated (but at least both we're free!).

Sunday, I ventured off to Tivoli, which was another event put on by the program. Here I was able to get a tour of Hadrian's Villa, which is more like a small city although not as well-preserved as Pompeii, as well as a tour of the Villa d'Este. Hadrian's Villa definitely had more history involved and had more impressive architecture, but the Villa d'Este was beautiful, with amazing views of Rome and gushing fountains at every turn. It was quite a relaxing trip because of Tivoli's laid back atmosphere, usually I'm running around trying to do as much as possible so it was could to do just enjoy the surroundings and chill. Most of the pictures are of Tivoli that you see (I didn't include any of the Steps or the Cross so you'll have to see those when I get home). After getting home around 6pm from Tivoli, I had about an hour or so to make myself a quick lunch before setting off for my second soccer game, this time AS ROMA vs INTERMILAN. Inter won the Serie A championship last year so I knew I was going to see some great soccer, regardless of the result. Inter ended up winning 4-0, with 2 goals from Swedish Superstar Ibrahimovich, so it was a major bummer that Roma lost, but all 4 goals from Inter were incredible. This game wasn't nearly as crazy as the Napoli game (probably because of the blowout) but it was still an incredible experience and I'm hoping to make at least one more before I go home. The best part about the whole thing is that I finally got to see my favorite player in action... Francesco Tottiiiiiii

I leave early Friday morning for Assisi, then to Perugia, and finally to Florence this weekend so my next post will probably be at the same time next week. Sorry for the delays but I had a midterm today (dominated it) and a midterm next Wednesday so my time will be stretched thinner than usual. Enjoy the pictures.

Sidenote: got my haircut for the first time in Italy for 10 euro at an old fashion barbershop. Guy didn't speak any english so we talked about AS Roma and soccer in Italian for the most part... it was fun. He gave me a solid haircut too, and when I wanted to tip him he said no = good experience.