Day 32 (4/22/11)

Our 5th walk began at one of the gates to the Aurelian Wall, near a pretty fantastic pyramid! The pyramid was a monument and tomb to a Roman nobleman, and surprisingly fits right in with the city and its many obelisks (the pyramid was built here, not stolen from Egypt). We talked a little about the monument, the gates to the city, and the major road that runs through it: the Appia. Today’s walk will take us along the Appia Antica, which runs through Rome from the countryside to the sea and the harbor.
However, before we began our trek out of the city, we walked over to the Baths of Caracalla. This was one stop I was extremely excited about, since these baths were an amazing example of Roman engineering due to their crazy scale. We approached the Baths from above, which was a pretty great experience because we could see the entire site that they used to sit on (there is very little left of them, but enough to give the idea). We talked about the layout of the Baths and how they had been stripped of their marble by the Farnese family to build their Palazzo (so sad), and how there were no social classes (slaves and their masters came together) and no gender separations at the Baths, which was pretty cool. Anyway, we walked around the grounds for a while and saw the different rooms, which still had some of the marble mosaic floors left in them! After spending some time just enjoying the scale of the ruins for a while we left to begin our walk on the Appia Antica.
To get there, we were first planning to take a bus about halfway out and then walk, but we couldn’t fit our whole group on the only bus that came. So we decided to just walk it the whole way out of the city. This turned out to be an amazing choice, as we walked through some of the most beautiful countryside that I have ever seen! Our path took us through the main gates on the other side of the city, along very busy streets, through a huge field that had some neat ruins spread out in it, and finally to our planned first stop: a large crypt. Sadly, it was closed for the time, so we just kept walking. The road was littered with ruins and pieces parts of ancient stuff, and the views were pretty amazing! We saw a horse, a small town, and a pretty great tomb that had been turned into a castle during the Renaissance (the exhibit inside was pretty boring, but the building was nice!). One of the coolest parts about the road was how the surface was in continuous change, going from gigantic cobblestones to smaller rocks to very small bricks. Aside from looking cool, this kept me from daydreaming too much, since I had to focus on the ground as well as the beautiful day. When we finally made it to the “end” (about four miles later) we caught two busses back into the city where we split for the day.
After an early dinner, a small group of us left for the Coliseum so we could get good seats to see the Pope!!! The Stations of the Cross begin from the Pope’s mass in Basilica of San Giovanni, run through the Coliseum, then down a main path up to where the Pope sat. We got there about four hours early, and after a good deal of waiting and being herded like cows so they could do a security check, we ended up in the front row along the fence, about five yards from the Fifth Station (the first one outside of the Coliseum). The ceremony was unbelievable, there were more people gathered here than I have been a part of before, and the feeling was crazy. We were all given candles and a booklet with the whole thing in it, and the show began when we saw the flashing lights of the Pope’s cavalcade approaching.
We got to hear him speak (I could see him perfectly from my spot!!!!) before the Stations began, and after a while the procession passed by! It was led by a man in a wheelchair (not sure who he was) carrying the cross, followed by two people with torches, about twenty men of the clergy, and then some random people. The whole thing took about two hours, and after they finished the last Station, the Pope spoke for about ten minutes. When he finished, everyone clapped and cheered, and we began the slow penguin-march back home. It took about a half hour just to get some elbowroom, but we made it back to the Metro just fine. We ended up finding about half of the whole group on the Metro at various stops, somehow we all ended up in the same car! After we made it back, I had some dinner and went to bed, with the most tired feet I have ever had!