My Exeter Excursion: I Stalked the Pope

Hello again! I’m on a roll of blogging now – aka studying is getting super boring! Also, it’s so fun reading what I wrote on different days of my trip. It’s so weird to think in 17 days I will be done with finals, and then I only have 6 more days after that before I head back to America!

Rome was one of my favorite cities! It started off a little rocky though… You’ll come to realize that Sarah, Margy, and I managed to spice up our trip somehow everywhere we went. When we arrived in Rome we found our hotel and checked in. There was one MINOR problem though: the deal we found for this hotel was for two people and we realized that the security on the hotel was too high to sneak a third person in. We left frantic, not knowing what to do, I think at one point I offered to sleep in the street. After I shed a few unnecessary tears and ate the best gelato I have ever tasted, we decided to walk around Rome and attempted to find a plan. Our first stop was the Trevi fountain. (I used all of my wishes on hoping that we would somehow formulate a plan.) The fountain was so crowded, but I understand why – it was picturesque! One of my favorite things about Rome was the fact that I could simply point my camera and shoot a picture and it looked like Erin Dvorak had taken the picture. [Some of you may be asking yourselves, who is this Erin Dvorak creature Clare is talking about? Well my friends, Erin is one of my besties/an amazing photographer! You should check out her photo blog! http://erindvorakphotoblog.tumblr.com/] I felt so professional! After that we admired the coliseum. It was funny because we had been talking about how nerve-racking track meets used to be; Margy pointed out that the coliseum is a competition in the same shape, but with a different outcome – maybe track meets weren’t so bad after all! We were able to convince the hotel man to let three of us stay in the room with a little extra charge. We managed to dominate the free breakfasts every morning (and sneak some of it for lunch) so it was all worth it in the end! We finished the night with Pope sighting number 1. It was my favorite thing we did in Rome. We went to the Stations of the Cross at the coliseum at 9:00 that night. Every year the Pope picks a theme to focus the stations on and this year he had a couple write a reflection about the importance of family after every station. We were very fortunate that we are loud Americans because a man near us heard us talking and gave us a copy of the stations in English. His name was Brother Collin and he was born in Iowa. It was really nice talking to him and having him translate everything for us. That night I realized how lucky I am to have witnessed and been a part of the love between my grandparents. After 65 years of marriage, they are still in love and are a true example of what a great marriage should be.

We started out the day on April 7^th by going to get our tickets for Easter Mass. We actually ran into Alix Haguewood (one of the girls that I visited in Seville, Spain). It was completely unexpected, but a nice surprise! Next, we headed to Vatican City. It was so crowded there! We took a tour of the museum (it was amazing, but I was so overwhelmed with facts and the paintings began running together by the time we got to the Sistine Chapel). It was so interesting though, and I am glad we ended up getting the tour because I developed an appreciation of the art and the stories behind some of the pieces. The Sistine Chapel was breathtaking. It was one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen! It’s funny because we have the picture of the hands in my dining room, and I saw it every day for about 12 years of my life, but I just now truly appreciate it and what it represents. I stood in awe the entire time we were in there. After the 3 hour tour (I just sang the Gilligan’s Island theme song while I wrote that) all I wanted was a massage and food. We walked back to our favorite gelato place and got some more amazing gelato. I think the sugar mixed with exhaustion made Margy and I a little loopy. I felt bad for Sarah at that point because Margy and I laughed at everything that happened within the next 2 hours. We decided to go to the Spanish steps. The pictures we took there were a result of our loopiness and turned out pretty funny! After that we headed home and went to sleep – we had to wake up the next day at 5:30 for Easter!

Alix, Margy, and I

Pantheon

Best gelato IN THE WORLD!

Spanish Steps...

Easter Day: We woke up at 5:30 for Mass – I think that may be my first and last time ever waking up that early. Our favorite hotel man (he seriously looked like an Italian George Clooney) set out breakfast early for us. We headed to the bus stop and Alix happened to be on the same bus as us. We got there super early, and had great spots in line. We ended up running into Laura, Megan, Chelsea, Staci, Nikki, Kelsi, Tyler, Bobby, and Bryce. It was quite the Iowa State crew! When the gates finally opened we treated it like an Iowa State football game and SPRINTED and laid across rows to save seats for everyone. It may have been a little dramatic, but it was worth it because we got in the 8^th row! There were 50,000 people there, so we got super lucky. It was also ironic because we were sitting in front of three people our age and got to talking with them. We told them we were from Iowa State, and one of their responses was “OH MY GOSH I LOVE IOWA! DO ANY OF YOU KNOW WHERE SPENCER, IOWA IS?!” He told me it was his “favorite place in the world” which may have been a stretch, but it was cool! He was actually really good friends with Cass, so the two of us bonded over our love of Cassidy Ranee Wilson for a while. The Mass was so cool. We were given 78-page booklets to help us follow along. After Mass the Pope blessed everyone in 50 different languages. Then, a big group of us headed to the Colesium. It got really cold out of the middle of nowhere so we headed back to the hotel to change. Then, the Iowa State boys and us made our way to meet up with everyone for dinner. On the way we got slightly lost and ended up showing up way late, so we just had dinner on our own. We went out for drinks afterwards, and found a place that makes a shot glass out of chocolate. It was so yummy! Rome was too good to us!