ROMA take two

Friday morning, 6:15am: The 10 of us left the monastery, boarded a bus, and headed down to the station. Matteo met us at the station in Rome and we boarded another bus. Our first stop was cathedral that I can't remember the name of. It was pretty incredible though. The roof was painted in such a way so that the perspective was perfect as long as you were average height standing from a certain view. The figures looked like they were coming out of the ceiling, and it was hard to distinguish the painting from the actual architecture of the building. It was pretty magnificent.
From there, we visited two more churches before ending up in what Matt calls "the most beautiful piazza in the world" (the picture above). At 11:30 we met up with the art students for lunch, before heading over to the Vatican Museum. It was a joyous reunion, having been without them for far too long.
Vatican City was nice, but I didn't see the pope, which was really sad. I found a fresco with a picture of a chubby little pope guy, that was the closest I got. see:The sistine chapel was impressive, but not as awesome as I'd imagined. I preferred the church we were in earlier that day. But regardless, it was still pretty great.
After the sistine chapel, the poetry students split off from the art class and began our journey back home. We walked to the center of the city to the gelateria we went to the first time we went to Rome. I got limoncello, orange, and grapefruit and it was delicious. Our train back to Orvieto left around 7pm. It was pretty full, so the group didn't sit together. Kate, Becky, John and I rode together in one of the glassed in sections. along with some random old guy. We spent most of the ride talking about our favourite books and movies, which was lovely.
After a busy day walking around the city, we were all pretty tired. I went to bed around 10, and spent the next 6 hours mostly not sleeping. I'm not sure why but I felt deathly ill and spent a good portion of the night on the bathroom floor. I woke up around 7...so today I was pretty tired.
The art students came back at around 12:30, and it's good to have them back. It was getting a little too quiet around here without Carissa.