So this morning, we went (as a free group tour offered by the school) to the catacombs of St. Sebastian. These were definitely not the same catacombs I went to last summer, so that was exciting.
Getting out to the catacombs felt a little bit like being back in Queens. We had to take the metro, and then we had to take the longest, most crowded bus ride ever (which was somehow even worse on the return trip). However, on the way, we got to see the Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran (which I gave a shoutout to in my presentation on St. Peter's Basilica), so that was neat.
***Didn't get a pic of the church. Well, I tried to, but my phone decided to freeze, and then the bus came. So I apologize.
The tour of the catacombs was pretty short, but there was a lot of cool stuff down there. No bones--none of the catacombs in Rome have bones in them anymore. But, there were some super cool, super ancient Roman family tombs in there, It also, as the name suggests, contained the original tomb of St. Sebastian. We got to see the area where his sarcophagus was, and then we got to see the real thing in the church built above the catacombs. The church also claims to have one of the arrows that St. Sebastian was shot with, and some spiritual footprints of Jesus...(didn't quite understand that story).
The group leaders said that we could either go back with them following the tour, or (as they recommended) we could stick around the area longer to see what else it had to offer. The only other free thing to do was to visit the grave site of the victims of the Ardeatine massacre, so we went there. (For those not familiar, which I wasn't until today, read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeatine_massacre ). There were just a few of us who did that (me, Katie, Eva, Ariel, Akira, Sam, and Ethan), and everything there was written in Italian, so it really didn't take very long to walk through. We headed out to the bus stop to find that our entire group was still waiting for the bus! So basically, everyone should have gone to the other place.
Like I said, that bus ride back was BRUTAL. Everyone was all pressed up against each other, I was basically standing on one leg, it was hot, there were Germans with BO--brutal all around. But we survived!
I spent the bulk of the afternoon doing homework, but around 4:15 Katie and I took a nice, long-ish walk over to the Trevi Fountain area to have gelato at one of my favorite places, Valentino's. It was perfect, and the walk there and back was long enough to burn at least some of the calories.
After more homework, we had dinner at one of our new favorite places, Spaccio Pasta. I had pasta with butter, parmesan, and truffle oil. It was so delicious that no description of mine could even begin to do it justice. And the best part is, I can get pasta with truffle oil for 10€ here, whereas it would probably cost three times as much back home. I also had two wonderful glasses of prosecco (necessary).
I set myself free from doing more homework after dinner. We have some fun things lined up for the weekend, but there will definitely be plenty of time set aside for papal encyclical-reading as well.
I can't believe I have less than two weeks left in Rome. Crazy! Gotta make sure I do everything I want to do.
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