Today was the day. The day that Mr. Hesting had warned us that we would be climbing the several hundred steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. I already got winded walking up the stairs to the second floor of my school. Why would I want to exert myself that much?

Before this, of course, we had class. We walked through the subway station and passed by people from many different countries. Some of the languages I heard upon passing by these people were Italian (of course), English, Spanish, Korean, French, Hindi, German, and much more that I didn’t really hear.

We got to Pontifical Universitas Urbaniana and stared out the window for a few minutes at the beautiful view of St. Peter’s Basilica and and the rest of Rome. I tried not to think about climbing up the 500-something stairs of the church later that day.

In Dr. Stark’s class, we compared each of the three Abrahamic religions to each other and described what challenges they had to face in the modern era. My group (Bronwen and Malachi) chose Islam and Judaism, while the remaining people chose Christianity. In Mr. Hesting’s class, we were taught about the three different types of feminism, which  is riveting to me, because I identify as a feminist.

After class, Malachi and I went to go get gelato from a place nearby the hotel. This place wasn’t very crowded, so needless to say, the gelato wasn’t as good as the other gelato just a few blocks away. I’ve realized that my friends and I have become gelato snobs who will only settle for the very best. Not that we want to change or anything…

After the gelato, it was time to climb to the top of the Basilica with Devin, our tour guide. We had to bring our passports, since we were technically entering into another country, Vatican City. The first few steps up the building were easy, and I thought we would have an easy time from there on out. It was quite the workout. When we reached the dome part of the Basilica and looked at all the mosaics (that’s right, mosaics. None of the beautiful pictures inside the Basilica were painted. All is mosaic.), I thought we had reached the top. This was not the case. We were going to climb to the very top of the dome, the OUTDOOR part. But then… Daylight hit me. A blast of cool air flew into my face. We had made it. We were finally on top! The view from the top was beautiful, and we could see the Papal Apartments, and also the place that Pope Francis actually stays, since he likes to consider himself equal to everyone else. I would have liked to take better pictures, but unfortunately, they have this awful bird cage type thing over the parts where people can go, so no one drops their phone or their selfie stick off the top of the church.

Now we had to climb back down, and I heard someone say they felt like they were shrinking with every step down. I was really jealous of the people on the elevator. We reached the last floor, and we got a tour of the Basilica from our other tour guide, Jill. What I found most interesting is that they had bodies of old popes on display, which unfortunately, we didn’t have time to see. The person who mentioned that she felt like shrinking with every step down was right. The Basilica made me and everyone else feel very tiny. This was a contrast from feeling big, like a giant, on top of the church, able to view everything below you. I think it was symbolic of something, but I just don’t know what.

Devin gave us a tour of the Castle Sant Angelo. It really wasn’t a castle, however, it was intended to be a tomb for the person who built it, but it was kind of converted into a castle in its later. We walked up these stairs that looked like they should be above the ground. We saw a lot of cool paintings that were either bought or stolen from other regions at the time the castle was built.

After this, Devin walked us to this pizza place, La Montecarlo, but almost none of us actually got pizza. I ordered gnocchi with marinara and parmesan, which if you were wondering, gnocchi is potato balls that are eaten with sauce like pasta. It was very filling. I ate it all and also some of the fried Italian delicacies that were ordered on our behalf.

Tomorrow, we aren’t doing a class and instead touring the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN. I will talk about that in the next blog.

Until then,

Summer