Travels Around Roma Part XX: Il Papa!

Its fitting that I have 20 sections for being around Roma, because I was 20 when I was there and it has been the highlight of my twenties so far.  So far I have shown you pretty much everything about Roma except for one thing, or should I say one man.  The head honcho or Roma himself that is, Pope Benedict XVI.  I took a Science and Religion class and our professor was a Catholic priest, and he told us that this pope is very quite, introverted, and likes to read and study a lot.  This is a polarized juxtaposition from the last pope, John Paul II, who was crazy and invited random people over to the Vatican and liked to go alpine skiing a lot, making everyone nervous about his safety all the time.  Well it turns out the pope speaks every Wednesday morning, and while I was walking to school during my last week before finals, I happened to catch a glimpse of him.  I stayed for a while, so much so that I was late to my Modern Italy Culture and Identity class by about 10 min (I ended up getting an A in that class anyways, so it doesn't matter).  And for some reason I happened to have my camera on me so I was in luck.  I stood in one place (you had to pass through security to get into the piazza, which I didn't feel like doing) and zoomed on at various times to see il Papa.


Here is the view I saw, typical of St. Peter's but with a crowd.  So I zoomed in with my camera to see more.

There is Benny himself on the big screen, but where is he in person?

Ecco!!! (Here it is!) He's right in the middle under this little tent surrounded by two cardinals.  And his guards (the Swiss guards I assume) surround that with their funny red hats.  They also embarrass themselves with clown shoes, but that must be seen in person. 

I zoomed out a little more...

And I returned to normal view of the usual St. Peter's Basilica.  I literally walked by this everyday on the way to school, so I actually got tired to seeing it.  But I really liked how it changed colors and looked different depending on the lighting of the sky/time of day.  The roof is copper green at nighttime, which I loved.  

Well that about concluded it for this blog.  I had finals week and then I left on December 12th, 2009 back to Los Angeles.  Our flight was scheduled to go to Heathrow with British Airways, but the London fog cancelled our flight (for like 30 people in my program too).  There was a lot of hassle and arguing with airport officials at the airport, but we eventually got rerouted to Munich and then from Munich to LAX through Luftanza Air, which is smaller than British Air and not as nice. I ordered multiple glasses of champagne from them to make up for this difference. (Relax people, I was fine). When we finally got to Munich we literally had around 10 minutes from when our flight landed to when the next flight left.  There was someone from the airport waiting for us and taking us exactly to our terminal really quickly so we could make the flight, which we did.  The flight to LAX was really really long (around 14 hours) and I watched Pelham 123, The Time Traveler's Wife, Arabic Music videos, an episode of Frasier, and episode of Everybody Hates Chris, and anything else that would kill time.  And I was flying with all my friends but we all got random seating on the new flight, so needless to say it was a looooooong flight.  Eventually we all got to LAX and got picked up from the international flight waiting center that still looks like it does when it was made in the '80s.  And after not driving for 4 months, I immediately drove on the 405 freeway from LAX back home.  I did the math since my original flight was around noon and I woke up at 8am to get ready and leave for Fiumicino airport at 9am, it took me 24 hours of real time to go from my bed in Via Candia to my bed back home in L.A.  Soon after I got back I had vivid flashbacks of Roma but they are now subsiding more or less. And that's where my story ends.  Now I am back to my normal life but my life abroad will always live on in this blog forever.  Ciao!