Il giorno ultimo

The last day...
After the last day of school on Friday, we had essentially only Saturday because almost everyone had flights scheduled for Sunday morning. I packed and went to see the Borghese gallery, which was amazing. It was about the same price as the Vatican museums, but I would recommend it over them. On the first floor there were amazing Bernini statues in almost every room- all of his famous works, and then were were a lot of paintings by Caravaggio as well. It was all amazing, and after the first floor the second floor was almost not worth looking at. After the museum, we had a class dinner with Ingrid, Ricardo, and Marie Andree (our professors) at the 'green tablecloth' restaurant (we tend to not know the names of most of the restaurants we eat at and describe them by location or tablecloth color!). We said goodbyes after dinner and headed up the street for Giolitti's gelato, where Tom got 'il giganto' cone for 9 euros. It was probably a foot high! We went to Mickey's bar with our gelato in hand and sat there for a couple of hours, sipping our last of the free wine from
Mickey (Tom was still trying to conquer his gelato) while Mickey put on the sappiest music ever.

We broke off into smaller groups after that- I ended up with Nina, Tom, Dan Bertao, and Cailin. We went around to the Pantheon, Trevi, and Spanish steps pouring out 'libations' of wine at each stop! We finally headed back to the Lunetta at 3:30 AM to say goodbye to the kids leaving from Fiumincino at 4. After they left, I went to bed for a couple of hours and woke up to go to mass at St. Ivo- so I got my Sunday mass requirement in, but I wasn't entirely there for the whole thing either! We were picked up at 11 AM and headed out to the airport. Our flight went smoothly; I didn't feel like I slept that much, but I guess I was out for probably 6 of the 10 hours of the flight! We had some of our last alcohol legally(!) and then we all scrambled through customs and luggage to make connecting flights, and in my case, trains.

It was strange taking the bus and having english be the default language! I'm really used to having to try a foreign language when taking public transportation, and the other thing that was strange was the size of the cars! Wow the US cars are big! Anyway, I made it to the train station, realized how much better European trains are, especially with posting schedules, and took the train down to BWI rail station where I got picked up at 11 PM east coast time... 5 AM Rome time! It's still at little strange to wear shorts and have a dishwasher- but I think I'll adjust to that just fine!