We started out the day by going to the Da Vinci Science Museum.  It was diverse as well, like yesterday’s museum, but in a totally different way.  It had modern information and laboratories, but also later on, it had many of Da Vinci’s drawings.  It was a contemporary museum in that it had sections on the development of certain technologies like in the communication department, transportation, and even astronomy.  It had a later copy from 1626 of the last supper by an artist other than Leonardo, it having the same layout, but much different than Da Vinci’s overall.  It was one of the more favored museums that we had gone to, probably for its diverse nature, and it was extremely informational.

Our next stop, one of very many today, was the Laurentio Cathedral.  It was rather small compared to the others, but circular, so you could see almost the whole thing from the entrance.  It was still powerful just as much as the others, with some of its own original artwork on the walls and domed ceiling.

After wandering near the Duomo and through the large arch of Vittorio Emanuele II leading to an indoor shop place, we ventured on to the Museo Teatrale Alla Scala, a theatre of an elegant that nature that had performed many notable plays in the past.  We tried to get tickets to the opera for later tonight, but it didn’t work out, even though they would only be ten euro for each of us.  The performance was at eight o’clock, and we had another appointment at six.  The theatre was very extravagant and had an interior that would be considered remarkable in America.

Next was, in English, the Sforza Castle, a brilliant structure that once even had a moat, something I enjoyed.  It had been turned into a museum, but one of the rooms was famous because it had been painted by Michelangelo.  It was of a green ceiling with blue inscriptions next to the arches.  It was strange for him to have done, since I usually expect him to paint something like an event, but it was still of a master’s quality.

We then walked to the Santa Maria del Grazie, a beautiful church that sported fantastic lighting, from what I saw.  We didn’t stay there long, since we had our six o’clock appointment at the place that held the Last Supper painting.  It was apparently a building called the Cenacolo Vinciano.  There was a short wait, then our whole group went in at the same time with a few other people.

I knew it would be amazing to see Da Vinci’s original Last Supper painting, and it was truly surreal.  No pictures were allowed, but one of our students accidentally left the flash on when he took a picture and got caught by a photo Nazi.  He got dirt from us about that for a while afterwards.  But the painting, which had partly worn away because of the material used, was of a special meaning and significance, probably the most important painting in the world, if not perhaps the Mona Lisa.  It covers the whole back wall of a moderately sized room, the bottom, where Jesus’ feet would be, covered with a doorway of some sort.  Our group got to stay in the room for about fifteen minutes.  There was also another painting on the opposite wall, which had endured less to no damage at all, though it was possibly just as old.

By the time we left the Last Supper, we were all fatigued from the many museums and churches and extra walking, along with the Milan heat.  Once again, some students decided to make dinner, which was some very good pasta, with marinara sauce.  I was surprised they would take it upon themselves to do that when we usually just go out to eat, but our hostel was far from most restaurants, and we didn’t want to walk anywhere.

Most of us were discussing tomorrow’s plans, since all of us were going to Venice on our free day, even though we could go anywhere.  Dr. Erdogmus told us that she would be going to Cinque Terre on Friday and that we could join her.  It would be an eleven kilometer hike up and down the coast, along with a round trip train ride from Milan, but I wanted to try it, since Cinque Terre has legendary landscapes.  But for Venice, the students were going there independently, including buying our train tickets tomorrow.  We had checked online, and the round trip should be about $98, which translates to 65 euro.

We brought our computers into the dining room later in the evening to do stuff like typing and FaceBooking, since we had Internet here in the hostel, surprisingly enough.  The hostel had proved itself worthy of our demands and exceeded my expectations.  Four of the students were staying in Venice tomorrow night in a hostel, and we had known about this for a while.  I had checked it out too, and it’s only 25 euro for a night there, so I thought that the quality in a place like that might really be terrible.  But the students I was going to Venice with were all returning on the latest train back to Milan, which left at 7:50 pm.  The train we were planning on left Milan at 8:05 am, so we had an early day.

One negative about the hostel here in Milan was that there never was any breakfast, so we had usually skipped it since we had woken up later and eaten an earlier lunch.  But I had learned to adapt here, since we ate less on a normal day and walked many miles, the actual number escapes my imagination, but I could guess at five on average.  That’s just the other people here usually at a normal pace, at least three miles an hour.  I just like to think about it.  By then end of the trip, we might have walked a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles.  Someday, I’d also like to measure the distances we’ve traveled around Italy, since we’ll have covered most of the country, from planes to trains to buses to walking.  It’s all getting easier.

The museum of the day was positively enormous.  It had many rooms filled with paintings that were possibly the originals, some of them able to span a bedroom wall.  Unfortunately, once again, pictures were not allowed, so I only got a few.  It started with the older paintings, then there was a section with more contemporary paintings, meaning in the nineteenth century for the most part.  There was one painting that was famous by with a strangely shaped face of a man, but I have forgotten the name of the painter.  Anyways, this museum was very diverse in that it showed different time periods and artists.  I was able to distinguish most artists from each other by the end of the museum, primarily in the area with the older paintings.  The golden backgrounds used in religious pieces almost make it so that it will always be in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  They always seem to have the same mood, too – extreme reverence and a unique display of emotion.

We did a lot of walking in the hot sun again, but my feet no longer could get tired.  There were many things to see in Milan, and the student group that had gone to Italy last year had spent much more time in Milan and less in Rome.

In the afternoon, we walked to the university in Milan and actually met some of the engineering professors there and got a quick tour of the engineering part of the university, including some of the labs and a nice demonstration of the equipment used.  We then had three lectures, just for our group; one was about non-destructive testing, another about the evaluation of different materials against flooding, and the last about masonry.  They were interesting and relevant, but the Italian professors used PowerPoint presentations and had a lot of words on each slide, which became boring, especially the last one, in which a couple students nearly fell asleep.  It really was hard to understand the last professor because of her excessive accent.

A few of the students in our group went to the nearby supermarket and bought supplies to make a Mexican dinner, so we had tacos, another nice little break from the native cuisine.  We still had yet to eat the food of the authentic locals, which would probably happen in one of the smaller towns because they couldn’t import food as easily.

We got up a little later, even though we had a train.  It didn’t leave until noon, so we were in no hurry.  Once again, however, we got to the train station excessively early, more than an hour before the train left.  That gave me time to look up Venice in my guide book and find where we could go on Thursday.  The Basilica di San Marco was a given, but other than that, it was just about exploring the canals.

The train ride was about the same amount of time as the first, but it’s hard to tell, since they all seem the same no matter what.  There were a lot more tunnels on this ride, though, but when we could see the landscape, there were farmlands and massive mountains in the background.  That was one of the greatest aspects of Italy – its rural areas.  We primarily played cards again on the train, since we were grouped in the same section together, with assigned seating this time.  It was already mid-afternoon by the time we got to Milan, and we were still going to explore the city before the end of the day.

After we surfaced from the underground transportation system, the subway, it was a good fifteen minute walk to get to our hostel.  The hostel we are staying at simply has more beds in a room than a hotel, such as eight to thirty, so that all seven of us guys stayed in the same room and the girls were divided up into two.  The hostel was also like a community center in that it had two rooms for seating and watching TV, one as a dining room, a kitchen, and the rooms.  I liked the layout, especially after what a hostel could have been like, based on what we had heard.

We didn’t stay there long before leaving the hostel around three thirty for a long walk to the Duomo of Milan, a large cathedral with a new style to see.  It had an elaborate façade of a clean white color and Gothic architecture.  It was surrounded in small, skinny towers with statues at the tops, more than two thousand in total around the structure.  Every corner seemed to be designed perfectly, with arches and triangles and a magnificent dome on top.  As a group, we climbed to the top on the exterior and got a nice view of Milan.  There were a few skyscrapers in the distance, indicating Milan’s difference from Rome and Florence in that they have industrialized without keeping all their antiquity.

After descending the Duomo, we entered the interior of the cathedral to find it just as grand.  Once inside, I quickly forgot about the magnificence of the exterior, simply because the columns around the pews were lined with hanging masterpieces of art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  There were more windows of stained glass than I had seen in any other single cathedral, and they were in sections, meaning that there were many large windows collectively.

The style of the interior was pretty similar to some others that we had seen, which was bound to happen by now, since we’ve seen so many different cathedrals, but the specific designs on the floors and columns are never quite the same.  I enjoyed the grandness of the Duomo and its nice symmetry.  It was a monument that I am glad has been kept in perfect condition, considering its age, though most cathedrals are like this in that aspect.  There comes a point in history when the cathedrals were constructed and have worn away because of time, but cathedrals like this have probably always been maintained because people knew that it was a precious piece of their own history.

By this time, it was already late afternoon, and we were free to wander.  A large group of us, probably sixteen or seventeen out of the twenty-one in the entire group, found an American restaurant near the Duomo, and we all got hamburgers.  It was a break from the pure Italian food, and it was good, but I don’t need hamburgers weekly, so I was doing fine in terms of what food I had been deprived of.  Most of the food we had tried so far was normal in the US, such as pizza or pasta or Panini.  It’s just that this was all we were having, along with gelato, of course.

We were all pretty tired by the time we walked back to the hostel.  There were four bunk beds in our room, and I chose to be on the bottom, since I could use my laptop easier that way, but the beds were so close together in altitude that I couldn’t even sit up to type.  I decided that I would take the laptop to the common room or dining room to type, but since I was so tired, I went to bed pretty early, and so did most of the others.

So, Milan is a rather large city that has kept a few of its old buildings, while many of the ancient artifacts are now in museums.  That’s how it works here, just a little different from Rome, where the ancient structure are restored and glorified.  Milan is known for different things, though, such as fashion, and we’re here to see architecture.

We were warned before leaving the hotel that we would be going on a hike in the early morning.  Now after more than a week of walking roughly five or more miles daily, a hike has to be pretty rough.  It started out like any other walk, but soon we were walking up steep roads that would have been difficult to traverse in snow, if there ever was any here.  We quickly felt the heat on our backs, and, combined with the ascent, was once again strenuous, like Rome had been on day two.  Fortunately, the view was very much worth it at the top.  The dome and tower were easily visible and were surrounded by a beautiful Florentine landscape filled with mountains in the background and red rooftops in the city.

There was another museum after the ascent, and this museum had another copy of David, which wasn’t much less than the original, in my opinion, but the original truly cannot be surpassed.  This museum was rather small, but it had a few unique statues, including one of Perseus holding the severed head of Medusa.

Other than that, we had a lot of free time today from the afternoon on, for which I used to shop quite a bit.  There is a large market with a few branches next to one of the churches we visited.  This market sold mostly leather products, from belts to handbags, and also journals and scarves; apparently Florence is known for its leather.  I stayed there for a while to see if I could find anything, and there were many things I could have bought, but never did, mostly since I don’t need a leather bag.

We had a quiet evening of cards on the terrace, then I did some journaling to catch up on the events of the past few days, since I never seem to keep up with the days.  I also uploaded some more pictures from my camera.  I’ve noticed that I haven’t taken as many pictures per day in Florence as in Rome, so it’s much easier to organize them into groups.

I’m also noticing the quicker pace now, since we’re leaving for Milan tomorrow morning by train.  It seems like we’ve been in Florence for a while, even though at the  same time it also was very short.  Most people seem to like Florence more than Rome for many reasons, one of them being the cleaner quality of the city.  I agree, but I like Rome a lot and expected it to be crowded and filled with tourists, but Florence is a work of art as well.

We started a little later today, but the bells were loud enough at eight to wake most of us anyways.  Our first stop was a rare gothic church – rare in that Italy supposedly didn’t have gothic architecture, but Dr. Erdogmus had apparently written her thesis about Italian gothic.  This church used multiple styles of architecture, one of which made the church appear longer by making the columns form squares at the back and rectangles near the altar, as I discussed a few days ago in this journal.

Unfortunately, this church forbid pictures to be taken of the interior, but it was familiar anyways on the inside.  Although the method used to make the church look longer didn’t seem to do what is was meant to, it is difficult to argue with the idea of perception, since I can’t say that it looks longer than it is when I don’t know what to guess.

We walked back near the Santa Maria del Fiore, then to another nearby church that apparently had an unfinished exterior wall.  It was bare, in reality, but people of Italy were discussing whether or not to finish it.  It really was rather grand on the outside, and I was noticing the similar shapes of the floor plans for the cathedrals – they weren’t purely rectangular like I expected, but closer to the shape of a cross, with the horizontal piece of wood being like a semicircular more so than rectangles.

After that, we found the museum where Medici was buried.  Cosimo the Elder was apparently buried inside a column that supports the presbytery of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the church we had just visited.  Inside the museum were also some relics that were from priests, preserved in ornate pieces.  It was a relatively small museum, just a couple rooms.

We then ventured on to the Basilica de Santa Croce. It had a decorative façade, something I had noticed as interesting.  So a cathedral might have a normal shingled roof, but its façade often was taller and slightly wider, presenting a greater appearance from the entryway than the side.  It’s just something that I think makes some of these cathedrals seem more from certain angles.  But this was one of the more interesting cathedrals, especially from the inside.  It had wooden arches and a raftered ceiling, which I found strange, especially since the chapel areas at the side were marvelously sculpted, with columns and paintings, the works.  It also had the tomb of Michelangelo and Dante here.

The Basilica de Santa Croce was a generally strange place in terms of architecture.  Yes, old places here in Italy have a lot of opportunity to be changed over time to adapt to new styles, but some places seem so new that they could be less than a hundred years old.  I guess this place just had too much wood for me to believe that it was all that old.

I already felt like we had been living in Florence for much longer than a day.  I knew my way around the city, at least in my hotel area, fairly well, along with the nearest gelateria, which had good prices and my favorite flavors.  Just by wandering, a small group I was in found a nice place to eat that was just a block from the hotel, and I had tortellini.  You can’t go wrong with tortellini.  I think I had it twice today, actually.

So we don’t have Internet in Florence, due to the two star hotel, but it’s good that we don’t always have it.  I can’t communicate via email for a little while, but it makes us students return to the eighties in terms of that kind of technology.  We still always have electricity, of course, since we’re in the city, and that’s pretty much all we need.  Us eighteen students all know each other pretty well now, as well as we would know each other if it was a two month trip.  I’ve been able to talk with everyone here, since we’re all rather open and friendly, all engineers, and it often shows.  Most of the Omaha students are in Architectural Engineering, while Lincoln students are in Biosystems or something of that sort.

I’d like to buy something, a souvenir or something, in every city, but near the end, we’re going to lots of cities really fast.  I got an Italia jacket for ten euro back in Rome a couple days ago, and I really like it.  I don’t usually like clothes, but for once, I bought clothes for myself.  I fantasize about buying an Italian suit, or simply an Italian outfit that doesn’t cost too much.  I just exchanged three hundred US dollars into 188 euro before leaving Rome, and I’m hoping that it lasts the rest of the trip.  I think it averages out to me paying only like ten euro a day for food, and the rest is random souvenirs.  Gelato is a daily occurrence now, since it is so good and irresistible every time I see it.

So after Santa Croce, we had the no-photo museum with the large, legitimate statue of David – legitimate because there are many copies.  It really is what it is meant to be, with its perfect pose and use of muscles.  David was only one part of the museum, but there were also many other pieces of art, mostly statues and a few paintings.  It was a big day for museums, with two others, but they didn’t take as long.  One of them had the famous painting of Venus symbolizing autumn.  Both forbade pictures as well, so I was disappointed in that aspect, but they had a lot of information and statues.

We woke up the earliest for the train, since it apparently departed at 9:15 in the morning and we wanted to be there really early.  Ready to leave the hotel by 7:45, take the Metro two stops to Termini, get off and take the train from there.  We arrived at the station excessively early, in my opinion, around 8:30.  Even so, it’s good to be there early rather than late.  We didn’t have any specific seats on the car, but I found an open place next to four of the other students and we played some card games.  I learned how to play Rummy on the train ride and found it really interesting.

Once we got off the train, we had a long walk – even compared to Rome – to our new place to stay, a two star hotel called Hotel Medici.  It had a lobby the size of a dorm bedroom, and I was in room 308, which is three floors up here, not two like you might expect.  I had almost gotten used to that aspect of Italy, and I only had to take up all my luggage once.

We then left the hotel after unpacking with a short rest break, then wandered through the Piazza Signoria, which had a unique display of statues next to an arched background.  One of the statues was a copy of David, a masterpiece that we would later see.  We were only there in passing for now; our first stop in Florence was a museum next to the river.  It was surprisingly hot in Florence, unlike Rome during our stay, and since we walked everywhere and for extended durations, it wouldn’t be as easy.  By now, I could probably walk any distance without becoming tired, but the heat can really change that.

Next, we made our way to the largest cathedral in Florence, the Santa Maria del Fiore.  It was actually visible from our hotel room, at least the top of the tower was, but it really is a beautiful piece of architecture from any view.  We went inside, first climbing the ascent that leads around the dome and to the top of it.  The dome is one of the largest in Italy, I believe, so there were many great views of a Florentine landscape at the top of the dome.  The interior of the dome is also covered with masterpieces of art that deserve much more than they are given.

It was a long descent, narrow, but that never bothers me.  We then exited from the dome area and reentered into the cathedral, which was less marble and possessed more wooden supports and furnishings.

We stayed inside the cathedral for a while, leading into the late afternoon.  This was Florence’s big thing, and we had seen it by day one of being in this city.  I was glad that we got to go inside today since it’s a place that we can see from the hotel and I didn’t want to have to see it and not know much about it.

After the tower and cathedral, we were done with the program for the day, so we wandered in small groups, findings random shops and places to eat.  Since we were still staying in cities for multiple days, unlike what would be happening next week, we had the chance to find out the best areas to go and all that.

Well, I supposed there’s one aspect of Italy that I’ve left out entirely: gelato.  It’s basically just really good ice cream.  It has become a favorite among our group.  I wasn’t sure if it was specific to Rome or that area or what, but now that we found some this afternoon in Florence, I’m certain that it’s all around Italy.  And the nice thing about gelato is that there are so many flavors, and each gelateria has its own set of flavors.  I’ve come to like fondente the most, which is simply a very dark and very rich chocolate.  I also only get it in cups rather than cones, since I believe that I’m getting more this way, and the prices vary from two euro to sometimes three fifty.  I’ve had it probably five or six times by now, and it really is fantastic each time, with some new flavors now and then that I try out.  It really is popular here, like our ice cream but even more popular than that.

So most of the group hung out on the terrace on the sixth floor of our hotel, having an even better view of both the tower and cathedral, and we played cards for a while.  It was the perfect view of Florence, with great lighting of the dome as well.

Overall, Florence is obviously much smaller based on reputation, but it is also much less touristy, and therefore much more real.  It still has vendors, and these ones have nice photocopies of artworks.  It is also much quieter, other than the loud and long bells that ring from the tower, I believe, that could probably be heard anywhere in the city.  I enjoy Florence in a different way than Rome, but I miss Rome simply because the six days we spent there seemed like a lot more than six days, closer to enough time to be closer to a lifestyle.  We had gotten the walking down, and in Florence, everything was just a little closer together, so that it didn’t need any underground transportation.  Both cities make use of their known tourist aspects, but Florence is much better at being subtle about it.

Another early start.  When we got to the Vatican, after another long trek of Metro and speed-walking, there was no line for St. Peter’s Basilica at all.  That was perhaps at nine in the morning.

I first took a picture of one of the colorful guards – I’m not sure what they’re called, but they wear brightly striped clothing and a beret of some sort while holding a spear and they have to stand still all day.  Then, we entered the Basilica.

I instantly found it to be an enormous monument, or perhaps a tribute, to art at its epitome.  There was no marble stone left untouched here – the floors had a careful pattern, the ceilings were ornamented with vast designs that could have been secret symbols of an unknown meaning, and then the beautiful walls and arches, sculptures or a familiar style, and Latin writing all around.  It isn’t enough to put it in words, to describe any part of it, almost disrespectful, since it was so amazing.  I can see why there was such a long line yesterday.

I took pictures wherever possible, using the incoming light as a way to beautify the interior evening more.  I had taken roughly two hundred fifty pictures yesterday and uploaded the whole trip’s pictures to my laptop last night, accumulating to about seven hundred thirty, with still more than two weeks left.  I estimated at the beginning that I could possibly get to five thousand pictures, but that would average two hundred fifty daily, whereas the real average is about a hundred, maybe less in the end, since we’ll be traveling to lots of cities later in a shorter time span.  My storage card can hold about twenty six hundred pictures, so I won’t have to delete anything from that card until I get it off to everyone who wants it, I guess.  It makes everything much more convenient, really.

So I can ramble on for as long as I like while I make up for not writing too much about the actual Basilica, since my pictures talk for themselves.  We stayed in there for a good hour and a half, even though it is just one giant room, in reality.  Even the view from the steps of the Basilica is wondrous, since it is the circular formation of gigantic columns in the recognizable shape in front of the Basilica.  We gathered around the central obelisk and got ready for our scavenger hunt.

Dr. Erdogmus had three sets of clues for five places that we had to name and take pictures of that were scattered throughout Rome, so we divided ourselves into three groups and began racing around the city.  This began at roughly eleven thirty, and we agreed to meet back at the hotel at one thirty after a lunch.

We figured out our clues on the walk to the Pantheon, our first stop.  The rest of the places were on the way to the hotel, then we quickly boarded the Metro to return to the hotel and got there first and got all of the correct answers.  It was technically a graded assignment, so that was good.  I had a while to rest and get lunch, then at one thirty, we gathered together and met a few people from the University of Rome who had agreed with Dr. Erdogmus to give us a tour of the university since they hadn’t had any classrooms open for us to have a lecture.

It was a long walk to the university, and I was already tired from speed-walking during our scavenger hunt.  When we got there, we waited for a little while at the edge of a courtyard filled with students.  Apparently their school years goes a little later into summer.

The study rooms were filled with students still, since we walked through the engineering area, where most of the students were curious about twenty American engineers walking about their hallways.  We then proceeded to gather more attention by meandering into the center of the courtyard, which was empty of all other students, and got a group picture there.  We had taken quite a few of those by now, I guess.

There was also a small church close to the university of a modest size and crowd.  For Rome, it was a normal church, but still possessed abnormal and exquisite qualities such as a large display of sculptures on one side.

To make it short, the rest of the day was a little easier, with some free time and a nice, relaxing last evening in Rome.  I wished we could stay longer, but not only did we have many more cities to see, but we had been basically everywhere in Rome that was of value.

Tomorrow will be my first day on a train.  To Florence!

Contrary to my expectations, we woke up late today to go to the Vatican.  We were all done with breakfast by ten, then took the Metro six or so stops to a place not too far from the edge of the Vatican.  It was hot outside and the walk was long even from the Metro stop.

We had to go through extensive security, as one might expect while entering a new country, my fifth country, by the way, and got through that pretty fast.  After receiving tickets for the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, we first entered next to a stone courtyard.

Fortunately for me, pictures were allowed to be taken in every place in the Vatican except for the actual Sistine Chapel.  Dr. Erdogmus told us that it would be crowded in there and probably not up to our expectations, but I was glad to just be inside the Vatican itself.  I immediately began taking pictures of pictures and paintings whenever possible.

One of the first populated rooms was very dark, and it held the eggs of the royals.  They were gathered together and recently given for the public to see.  They were all highly unique and intricately pieced together in artistic shapes.  I never understood why eggs were used rather than some other form of wealth, but it was a new and enjoyable form of art.  I stayed there for a while to read the information about the eggs, and they were mostly distributed and given as gifts in the late 19^th century and early 20^th.  I expected all things in the Vatican to be much older, but these were the only recent things there, really.

After the eggs were more paintings, and I was really able to tell the style by now.  Early in the museum, I had seen paintings that relied heavily on their golden ornate frames, some in the shape of a cross when Christ was hanging on it.  Some of the sets were almost like a wall on a building without having to be there; they used the frames in the shapes of columns almost so that there were three dimensional protrusions, which were more common in some of the more complex systems.  I found quite a few paintings that caught my interest, primarily those that used a variety of colors and had multiple people, often in a town center signifying the end of a war or some sort of announcement.

One of my favorite paintings was of a dark corner in which a sheathed sword is lying against a column base; on the column, or perhaps just a pedestal, is a bright red curtain with dangling tassels visible.  There are also brass objects such as a vase and small statue, and a violin lying carefully on the curtain.  I liked this because of the dark aura and how it showed stillness with the sword in the exact center, making it the point of attention and first thing that the viewer might see.  To me, it symbolizes the part of society that might be temporarily strewn aside while others become prominent, such as war or music.  I can find many other interpretations of it, but this is the most optimistic.

Another of my favorites is of Eve offering the apple to Adam.  It is beautifully arranged, with majestic mountains just visible in the background, which is surprisingly my favorite part of it.  The background, seen in the center and left, possesses distant mountains in different layering and visibility or fogginess, then a closer mountain has a long waterfall.  I’m not sure why the background captivates my interest so unfailingly, but it does, perhaps because of the vivid colors of the foreground.  The diverse use of animals is also interesting, for there are truly not very many pairs of creatures, but the ones seen include a camel, monkey, lions, zebra, rooster, dogs, horse, parrots, and a few colorful birds, along a few other small creatures.  There are additionally a variety of shades of green, which makes it seem more like paradise, or Eden.  The unique feel of equilibrium also exists in this painting for me, probably from the sense of paradise.

After the paintings was the end of the museum, and then outside into a spacious courtyard.  The next part of the Vatican tour was the path leading to the Sistine Chapel.  However, it was a long ways until we got there.  First was a long hall of statues and busts, in the thousands, probably, and a few caught my attention.  Most were quite plain and similar, generic, and perfectly white.

Shortly after this hall was when the ceilings always were painted and often domed, with a few copies of the Pantheon dome in that they had large holes and square patterns.  It was basically another museum of paintings and sculptures up to the overwhelming and magnificent hall of maps, in which I heard someone say that there were forty.  I only took a picture of Sicily, since I’ve always found that island fascinating, and one of old and new Italy.  This whole hall deserves hours of my analysis, meaning that I could have stayed in that place pretty much forever.  The ceiling was the most beautiful I had ever seen, with a theme of gold.  Every painting on the ceiling was vividly colored and of the feel of a utopian kingdom, simply because of the perfect, in my opinion, style, and the royal depictions.

From the hall of maps and on, it was like a museum without the objects – the structure itself was the thing to see.  The walls were works of art and the ceilings were painted by world-renowned artists from the greatest centuries of history.  I took pictures of many of the gigantic paintings showing royal halls and important events, then finally got to the room with Raphael’s The School of Athens.  It was a relatively small and normal room compared to the rest of them, so I was surprised to see such a famous painting on a curved wall amongst the rest of them.  I captured a few pictures of it with different zooms, with Plato being the center and Aristotle to his right as the last image, just them.  It is a beautiful painting of a fantastic history, since it puts all the greatest philosophers, mathematicians, and overall minds and geniuses of early time into the same room together.  I think that this is one of the best uses of art, where it collects greatness and puts it together, like how films have the same opportunity, and the great films do just that – they show life as it could someday be, but now it is just a dream.

It was not long after this painting that we maneuvered through short hallways and finally arrived in the Sistine Chapel.  It was less crowded than I had expected, but was still packed.  Even though it was the one place where people weren’t allowed to take pictures, nearly everyone who had a camera on them was taking a picture.  Thus being, even with a few extra photo Nazis, I got a picture of the front wall, which was very detailed, and the ceiling, zooming in on The Creation of Adam pretty well.  After I had gotten those, I was able to look up for a few minutes and enjoy the most famous ceiling of all time.  It truly is a monument of artwork, not just overrated and seen as one of Michelangelo’s masterpieces, but a truly great story of art by a master of his style.

Everything after the Sistine Chapel seemed downplayed, or not as important or great as it should be.  The halls and ceilings were still magnificent and masterpieces by themselves, but they paled in comparison with the Sistine.  Being inside the Sistine Chapel, especially in retrospect, was surreal and mystifying.  Afterwards, I felt like I could understand the lesser paintings and artworks so that I could understand all art differently, if not better.  Seeing all these paintings was letting me guess the time it was made with much more accuracy and a better sense of style.

After exiting the Sistine Chapel area, we walked near to the edge of Vatican City and expected to go inside St. Peter’s Basilica, but we decided to wake up early tomorrow and do it then, since the line was probably a half mile long and not moving very quickly.  So, we made a relatively short walk to the Castel Sant’ Angelo, still on the west side of the Tiber River, and entered.

I enjoyed the architecture of the castle and its intentional symmetry, along with the large circular protrusion with an aesthetically pleasing layout on the top.  The castle acted as a museum, however, so it displayed paintings that were not allowed to be captured on camera, but I was able to recognize the style of these ones and found most of them familiar enough.

At the top of the castle was a large platform and observation deck, as it could have been, with many nice views of Rome.  I could even see the Vittorio Emanuele from here.  St. Peter’s and the Vatican was a nice distance from the castle as well.

Next was the Da Vinci Museum next to the Piazza del Popolo.  We had skipped this yesterday, but it was open every day until late evening, so we went inside.  It was full of interesting devices that Da Vinci concocted and sketched, but I wasn’t sure if he actually constructed any of these devices himself.  I was particularly impressed with Da Vinci’s ideal city, since it proves how many aspects of like he knew about and had mastered, since a city takes in a lot of details and many aspects of life into account.  The basic layout was a work of art itself, with a river or two running through the city.

The big group took the long ride on the Metro back to Manzoni and the hotel, and I went to bed pretty early.  I was liking the hotel still, but it was always loud outside, even with the window closed.  Even with that, I was always so tired from walking all day that I could sleep through anything.  It was also relatively warm in the room, even though it was adjustable, so I became tired easily in there.

I was beginning to think about the meals as well.  Breakfasts here were always easy and free, the lunches were quick and well-portioned, and dinners weren’t too pricy and usually a new selection of Italian cuisine, from a pizza to a new kind of pasta.  Actually, today, for instance, I walked in a random direction from the hotel to find dinner, and we ended up at a place where you choose three things, pasta, a meat, and a vegetable, so I had lasagna, fish, and green beans.  It wasn’t pure Italian stuff, I know, but it was a nice variety and a lot of food for a good price, nine euro.  I wanted to exchange some more money today, but we couldn’t find the place where they had no extra fees that someone in our group had found earlier.  I wanted to do a single exchange that would last the rest of the trip, and I wanted to do it before we left Rome on Friday morning, which was quickly approaching.

It felt like we had been living in Rome for a lot longer than five days by now, so much that I might as well have lived there for a year already.  I knew the city and had come to enjoy looking around and seeing all these beautiful buildings lined up close together, standing as memories among the new age of fast-paced and adapting society.

Ironically enough, the first destination today was the one we had randomly encountered yesterday.  We took the Metro to Flaminio and walked to the da Vinci Museum, but since it was closed for the next half hour, we decided to go to the church at the edge of the Piazza del Popolo.  I had seen the church yesterday, but it was like the Santa Maria in that it possessed a normal façade and proved to be the exact opposite on the interior.  I was ready for it to be anything, but once again, it surpassed even that, whatever it may have been.

This church had a symmetrical appearance and many chapels as well, like the Santa Maria, but it wasn’t nearly as popular.  The ceiling, though it had a beautiful shape, lacked artwork of any nature, other than ornaments of a single set on the back.  The main altar had a centerpiece surrounded by sculptures.  It was around this time that I started to notice similarities and differences in the actual style of the churches, mostly from the style.  Dr. Erdogmus later pointed out to us how a church in Florence presented both Gothic and other styles simply based on the architectural layout of the floor and columns.  At the entrance, the columns were arranged in squares, then as it progressed further, the squares abruptly changed to rectangles.  This apparently made the interior appear much larger, though it was undetectable without having known that beforehand.

From there, the Pantheon was an intermediate walk.  Once inside, we were given two hours to explore the interior.  With that much time, I found a column to sketch.  I found a portion at the top with a flowery decoration just below the support.  It was highly decorated, especially for its size, but my sketch was barely even close.  I still wandered around and looked at the dome, which provided a nice amount of light and in a constantly changing manner.

It is truly a work of art and a masterpiece as a work of architecture.  I believe that it is rather simple, though, compared to some places we have already seen.  It is a single room, but the designs on the walls and columns and extremely decorated.  On top of that, the dome is beautiful with the light coming through from the center.  From the outside, however, the dome appears to not fit in with anything – in Rome, really, because it has been degraded from time, and never restored.  And from far away, the dome appears very short, even though it looks tall from inside.  I imagine it required extensive questioning.

After sketching at the Pantheon, we took a lunch break and then made the long walk back to the Vittorio, where we ascended the steps and entered the museums on the right side of the overwhelming structure.  There were two museums, connected underground, with many statues and busts, primarily, of a diverse nature.  They also had the statue of the wolf with Romulus and Remus underneath it, the symbol for Rome.  This is one of the places where we weren’t allowed to take pictures in most places – though there weren’t any signs, just photo Nazis telling us ‘no photo!’ in a heavy Italian accent.  Anyways, my camera lost it battery near the beginning, so I had to begin our picture swapping among friends here.

We were given a lot of time in the museums, time which I could have used to sketch, in retrospect.  Now I think that whenever we have two hours in a single place, I have to sketch something, even if it is completely terrible.

A little free time, then we agreed on a group dinner in which almost everyone went, starting around seven thirty.  We walked for a while before finding a nice place that Dr.  Erdogmus had been to before.  I had a margherita pizza for the first time, which is a native specialty for less money, usually five to seven euro.  By now, I had learned that everything here costs the same as in the US, but the exchange rate makes it seem more expensive.  We stayed there for a while and didn’t get done until ten to ten thirty, and then there was still a long walk back home.  I enjoyed the hotel, since it was four stars, after all, and was really fancy, for my expectations.  Every city probably has these hotels, but in Florence, we’ll have a two star hotel.  We don’t want our trip to be too expensive.

Today started a little later for the lot of us; we agreed to have finish breakfast by ten in the morning, which was much easier than the two hour difference from yesterday at the Coliseum.  This was because today’s attractions didn’t require us to escape the crowds.

We first went to the Sacred Area of Largo Argentina, a place about twenty feet below the rest of the city.  It lies next to modern streets with cars and all that, but it is fenced off and is currently in a little restoration, or so it appeared.  This area was where Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.  It now houses many Roman cats.  I took pictures of the cats and found at least seven, I believe, though there are probably many more.  It is an odd idea, I think, to have cats just lying around in a place like that, where there are ancient columns and ruins all about.

After that, we made our way to the Piazza del Fiore, where there are three large and well-decorated fountains, each designed by Bernini out of a competition, as many things were back then roughly five hundred years ago when these famous sculptors and designers were in demand.  This piazza was once a stadium, which explains its long shape.  These  three fountains each have magnificent designs; the central one is the tallest and has an obelisk in the center.  The fountains and the sides each have sculptures of various sea creatures with human torsos and faces spouting water.  The central fountain is carved as if out of a mountainside or oceanic landscape.  Godlike men and horses compose most of the decoration, all of them set in detailed motion, giving the fountain a sense of action that compliments the perpetuity of the fountain water.

Next, we found the Santa Maria, a church with a relatively plain façade and an obelisk out front with an elephant supporting it.  It is very recognizable, since we passed it multiple times on the same day.  Inside the Santa Maria, then.

We knew that it had to be a church of better appearance on the interior than outside, since it was so plain, and we would not have entered otherwise.  But it still exceeded my extensive expectations.  The church was not only longer, wider, and taller from the inside than it appeared from the outside, but every square foot was part of an elaborate piece of artwork that spanned the entire building.

Firstly, the architectural aspects.  It was structurally symmetrical with long, thick columns supporting the high ceiling.  The pews were only located in the central part, although there were two sections, one on each side, of the pews, for extra space.

One thing I hadn’t expected at all was the numerous chapels on the sides, probably four on each side, running along the side walls.  Each chapel was highly decorated, as was the whole structure, for that matter, but most had beautiful paintings or graphic crucifixes in the center surrounded by columned arches and more decorations on the walls.  Most of the columns were ornamented with something, whether it is a spiral staircase with stone decoration that skillfully imitates nature’s biological growth, or a flowing plaque, as if it was billowing in the wind about the column, describing an honor in Latin.

With no aspect of Santa Maria being overlooked, the ceilings, walls, and floors all had something important to tell.  The ceilings were the first I had seen of a complex and artistic nature, along with the floor, with its inscriptions and outlines of past honored people.  Every wall was adorned with unique paintings, each deserving much more acclaim than they are given.  I enjoyed how detailed the chapels became, especially when I hadn’t known they would be a part of churches.  Since these are all Catholic churches, it makes sense, since I have never explored one in detail.  I still believe that the Santa Maria is one of the most beautiful and elegant churches ever constructed.  You wouldn’t think it from the outside.

After the Santa Maria, we walked to the Spanish Steps, as they are called.  Ironically enough, since they are so popular, I never took a picture of the steps themselves, since they were covered with tourists.  There is a beautiful building at the top, however, which I captured from many angles.  There were quite a few street vendors there, by the way.  Since I haven’t gotten to this yet, I might as well now.  There are always people selling random items, usually souvenirs.  These people offer the items to you as you walk past, but I’ve learned not to even look at the things if I don’t have a chance of buying them.  If you make eye contact with a vendor, you may be chased at least a few steps down the street.  A current popular object is a squishy ball that they throw on the ground, it splatters while staying inside the casing, then reforms itself.  It is funny to watch, because that’s all they do all day, and that’s how I see it.  They look around them to see if anyone’s watching, they throw down this ball, wait for it to form, then pick it up.  And it never seems like people buy them.  Another object they sell is tripods, along with bags, watches, watercolors, umbrellas, and sunglasses, mostly.  They must make enough business from them because of the massive number of tourists, because there are quite a few of these vendors everywhere.

Also, there are numerous beggars on the streets.  Some are old women who kneel on the edge of the sidewalk next to a cup, as if they are bowing to pray.  Others sit in the corners.  It is also popular to play music, though this isn’t begging, since I always have found the music to be very good and played by talented musicians.

Another oddity which I believe I have seen before, possibly in the Grand Canyon last summer, is people dressed up as statues, from Egyptian sarcophagi, raggedy people, and actual statues from the area they are in.  They simply stand there or do something funny and have a cup in front of them.  Lastly, as a part of the cultural difference or tourist area, there are men dressed up as gladiators who have their picture taken with tourists.

After the Spanish Steps, we split up from the big group and had the rest of the day to explore Rome.  Rather than walking miles back to the hotel and napping, I had enough energy to walk around the city.  Plus, I now felt like I had adjusted to the constant walking as well by this point in time.  I could walk forever without having to rest, if necessary, but I always had water with me.  Rome has hundreds of fountains scattered about, so it is easy enough to refill a water bottle wherever you are.

My small group stopped by a nearby McDonald’s for a bathroom break, and after we entered, we found that it was an entirely different place.  They served roughly the same food, but for more money, so that it might cost six euro for a meal there, where that would translate to nine American dollars.  I typically go by the general exchange rate of 1.5 US dollars to one euro, which is accurate enough and easy to calculate.  So this McDonald’s was huge and was inhabited mostly by native teenagers hanging out.  It was another culture shock, since I expected a fast food place to keep the same general format.

After we left, we wandered around, using a map of Rome, but without any real direction.  We passed by a structure with nice architecture called Archivio di Stato, but it appeared like it could have been used by modern businesses today.  It had a central courtyard and a set of statues on the back wall.  I was surprised that it wasn’t more popular, but there were a few other groups in there.

We then went to the Tiber River and went down the stairs to the level of the river.  A small group of homeless men were living under the bridge there with a nice supply of wood and a nearby fountain.  It seemed like they had things under control down there.  We could see the Castel Sant’ Angelo from the river, but we didn’t go there because we knew we would go there in the next day or two.

On the opposite side of the river was a large building with a well-decorated façade.  There were uniformed men in the inside, or we would have gone inside.  I assumed it was a government building of some sort, since there weren’t any indications of it being a museum.

We made our way down the river on the opposite side, and as we crossed the bridge back over, I saw another homeless man at the bottom, where the boats would dock.  He was alone and staring at the wall.  On the wall was a painting of what appeared to be a strange tree, and next to the painting were a sack and his other supplies.  The man continued to look at this painting, first standing, then sitting, then laying down with his hands supporting his head.  I found it interesting how fascinated this man was by such a painting – it was as if that was his life now, or had been for a little while, that this painting was all that mattered.  I’m not sure why I’m elaborating on it so much, but it was another strange cultural thing, though it could happen anywhere.  But the circumstances were such that it was very noteworthy.

After we passed back over the Tiber, we walked by a piazza and a closed mausoleum.  The piazza was small and had no people in it at all, except for a sole beggar.  Next was an inviting church that wouldn’t be on our agenda.  It had a tall ceiling and an exquisite, complex set of paintings on the ceiling.  There were fewer chapels here, with just as many altars, but it still was a beautiful structure.

Our small group then left the church and found the Piazza del Popolo, a large open area that currently had a set of stands that spanned nearly the whole area, and a stage that faced the tiers.  We found out the next day that it was being used for a police graduation ceremony.  But the piazza was grand, with a set of arches similar to the Arch of Constantine that was connected to adjacent buildings, creating a wall along the edge of the piazza.

There were two domes opposite the grand arch, but other than that, it was mostly under construction and renovation.  According to the map of Roma, we next climbed the stairs to an open park area called Pincio.  There was a lovely view from the top of Pincio that overlooked the Piazza del Popolo and the two domes.  Pincio also had a serene pathway and a couple small pools and lines of busts with the names of the respective historical people.

After descending from Pincio, we found the Metro and rode it back six stops from Flaminio to Manzoni.  This Metro stop, Manzoni, surfaces less than a hundred feet from the entrance of the hotel, so it really saves a lot of fatigue since there is almost no walking at all.

I didn’t make it long before falling asleep, since I had missed my daily nap and walked all day.  However routine, walking this much is still difficult.  I was sleeping by eight thirty and only woke once, briefly, then woke in the morning a little earlier again, to prepare for an eight o’clock start to the day.  It seemed like every morning switched off between early and moderately early, by my standards, but it really is irrelevant.  Especially since I fell asleep so early that night.

But after this night, I was completely adjusted to the time difference, in every way.  It was no longer an issue.  It was just another aspect of life to think about how it was seven hours earlier back home.  Even though it had only been two days now, I felt like I was living in Rome and had been doing so for much longer than two days – closer to a week already.  After we were done with the tours each day, the afternoons and evenings felt like they had been going on forever, like we had been doing this all our lives.  I knew Rome well now, and I didn’t want to leave.