Rome, Italy (Day Three)

Final day in Rome was catch up day. We started out the day by touring the church that was designed by Michaelagelo. It was pretty cool because it had a Galeleo display in part of it. It had all of these quotes about the mixture of science and religion. My favorite was when he said, "God wrote the book of nature in the form of a mathematical language. God gave us two books, that of sacred scripture and the other of nature and the language of nature is mathematics" I think I chose the right major :) It was a pretty church that is still in use. Lots of paintings everywhere of course and high arched ceilings.

Next we walked to a park that had some cool ruins. There were these ancient gates which according to myth were supposed change material into gold. The coolest part about these ruins though is that they were inhabited by cats!!! There were at least ten just chillin' in the ruins like it was their home. They came up to us and I wanting to pet them so badly, but I refrained for practical reasons.

"The Portal"

Next we took the metro back the Vatican. The Pope normally gives blessings on Sundays in Saint Peter's Square and we were hoping to see him there. When we arrived at the square we asked a priest about where to look for him and he told us to look at the second window at noon and the Pope will pop out just like a coo-coo clock! haha We ate a super early lunch and chilled in the square for a couple hours waiting. Then the screens started playing a mass with the Pope. We watched the mass and learned afterword that it was a live broadcast from Sicily. I guess seeing the Pope will have to wait for next time! We were a little disappointed that we had waiting around for nothing, but it was still cool to see the mass with it's impressive choirs. (It was odd that I knew what was happening in the latin parts more than the italian parts) We did also get to take a lot of fun photos with the Vatican :)

The last thing on our long to-do list in Rome was to go see the Face of Truth. The Face of Truth is a big stone face that resides in the oldest church in Rome. The tradition is to stick your hand inside the mouth and make a statement. If it is a lie, then a fish will bite off your hand. Courtney and I waited in line and stuck in our hands declaring "I love Chris/ Dennis" and came away with all hands in tact!

We ended our trip to Rome appropriately with some Gelato and one last look at the Colosseum. Then we went to the train station. We were worried about being short on time and we accidentally got on a train that was headed to Pisa. Luckily we got off before it left and found our real train and made it to the airport on time. Check in took forever and we barely made it to the gate on time- the plane was delayed anyways so in the end it all worked out. I saw everything I wanted to (minus the Pope) and made it there and back safe and sound.