A Rainy Monday

Monday March 16^th

Today we had the next of our student-led tours! Brandi, Mark, and Zak brought us on a wonderful tour of San Giovanni in Laterano and the surrounding area. It was a great tour and a beautiful area, however the weather in Rome today didn’t exactly feel the same way. It was a very dreary and rainy day, which was a little disappointing because we had to be out walking in it so much, but I really shouldn’t be complaining, because it was really only the second bad-weather day we have had this whole trip! (Sorry for my complaining, those of you back in Ohio!)

We went to the Basilica of San Giovanni, which was definitely on my Rome “bucket list” so I was very excited to finally see it! The Holy Door, the statues of the 12 Apostles, the multiple papal tombs, and the Holy Steps, were all a part of the tour and it was truly an amazing experience.

  

After the tour was over, we made the trek all the way to San Callisto to take a guided-tour of the Catacombs of Rome. It was really an interesting experience to get to walk through the catacombs, and surprisingly not as creepy as it sounds! Other than getting a little claustrophobic at times, I thought it was really interesting to learn about the history of the catacombs. It was also really awesome to consider how many people had been there, dead or alive I suppose, but there all the same. I feel like the catacombs are one of the more forgotten, or at least overshadowed, gems of Roman history simply because they cannot be seen in the way that things like the Colliseum or the Pantheon can be. They are literally like the hidden gem below the surface of the ground.

It was a great, rainy Monday day out in Rome, but tonight will be filled with all of us writing our blogs and midterm papers!