Easter with the Pope

We arrived in Roma to find it cold and rainy. For some reason we were not supprised; rain almost seems to be synonomous with Easter. There was only one place we had planned on going for Easter in Roma, to see the Pope. Thousands of people make the pilgramage every year so we decided to join in.

Getting off the metro was maddness, patrons and umbrella salesmen everywhere! The line to get into the basillica was MASSIVE! We looked at each other and decided to keep walking around to find another possible entry point. We stopped for a second in the middle to admire the size of this place (HUGE!), where Chelsea made her television news debut. They asked her a question about how the church was handeling the molestation allegations. A ballsy question for easter but she handled it like a pro! lol Hahaha YEAH RIGHT! I was like ahhhh i dont know enough about it! I didnt want to be asked a question anyway as most people know i am not a huge fan of news and not involved in politics and that! But the guy kept insisting....Ha! Anyway, we continued our search for another entry point and found a small gathering of people getting let in. It only took us 5 minutes or so of waiting and suddenly we found ourselves smack in the middle of it all. Somehow we snuck through security without having a pass..Lucky!! We bypassed about 2-3 hours of a line! Must be Karma!

So when the Pope finally came out, it was pretty exciting...although at the moment it was pouring and EVERYONE had their umbrellas way up and were blocking our view! booo but the music was really nice. We'll add a video later when we have more time!

Apparently the Sunday mass on Easter lasts 4 hours or so, so we didn't stick around the whole time! When we left...there was STILL a massive line to get in...and they had to go through these crazy security airport line things...which we bypassed altogether...nice!

It was pretty miserable outside so we just chilled out for a while and then decided to just go walk around a bit when the rain got lighter! We ended up stumbling into all these cathedrals, which seemed pretty appropriate for Easter SUnday! They were all beautiful and grand...and of course the pictures could not do it justice! Actually the coolest thing we found were the Scala Scanta which were these steps that you could ONLY climb on your KNEES! We decided to do it and it hurt like crazy but it was actually pretty touching! Some ladies behind us starting singing (in a different language) and it sounded really nice...and spiritual! We were glad we did it!

At the end of the day, we were starving and wanted to just get a small slice before we took the train home..but...we totally got ripped off! We were upset because so far we hadn't spent any money that day! But thankfully when we got back to Morlupo, we went to that little cafe that had the gelato, and the people there were so nice to us! Everyone was trying to talk to us, and we had out book out...its so funny trying to communicate when neither parties know much of the other language! But they gave us all these free samples of food and...i love that place :)

Miss everyone heaps!! xoxo