Easter Sunday and Tivoli

I'm going to start this post about Holy Thursday.  There is a tradition after Holy Thursday Mass to visit other churches.  These churches set up a side altar with flowers to remind people about Jesus' time in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Fr. Al, the Campus Minister for the JFRC, lead a group of about 25 students on a "church crawl".  We visited 11 churches over a few hours and prayed in each of them.

Afterwards, we went to dinner (getting our food around midnight no less!) at Osteria dell'Anima.  We were served an appetizer, pear pasta (!!!), and a meat dish.  It was a typical Fr. Al dinner, so there was also plenty of wine to go around.  We finished dinner around 1:00 AM, and headed back to campus.  This is where my Verona and Venice blog posts come in!

Once we galavanted around Verona and Venice and made our way back to Rome, we had tickets to Easter Sunday Mass at the Vatican.  I'm not going to lie, people were nervous.  My friends and I debated whether or not we would go due to the attacks in Brussels earlier that week.  We decided that we would regret not going.  How many times could we really say we went to Easter Sunday Mass at the Vatican with the Pope? 

We arrived around 7:15 and stood in line for about an hour.  It was madness when the gates opened.  There were many security checkpoints, so we felt pretty safe.  We made our way into the Square, and found some seats in the front section.  We got pretty lucky with our seats!

The Mass was beautiful! Thankfully there was a guide that we could follow since the Mass was mostly in Italian.  Receiving Communion was interesting, because it was basically a free-for-all.  Once Mass was over, the Pope went around in his Popemobile.  He then went to his balcony where he gives his Easter and Christmas Blessings.  This was really interesting to experience! 

We then had to make our way out.  This was definitely an experience.  We were only allowed to head out one direction but we wanted to go the other way.  We walked around the walls of the Vatican (literally walking around a country in a about 30 minutes! haha).  We got our paninis and then Old Bridge Gelato.  You definitely get the most bang for your buck!

On Monday morning, Marissa, Colleen, Emily, Maranda, Brittnay and I went to Tivoli.  We caught the regional train to Tiburtina and then a train to Tivoli.  Tivoli is where Villa d'Este is located, otherwise known as where they shot part of The Lizzie McGuire movie.  

The gardens were amazing!  It is obvious why they chose the gardens to film the movie.  There was a musical fountain, but it was kind of disappointing.  I thought that the water would match the music.  However, it was just the hydraulics playing the music.  We continued to walk around the gardens and, of course, took lots of pictures!  

Overall, it was a pretty good weekend!  Definitely non-stop with Verona, Venice, Easter Mass at the Vatican, and then Tivoli! Thankfully I have a great group of friends whom I am able to spend this time with!  

I have quite a few blog posts to write over the next few weeks.  I can't believe that my time in Rome is almost over!  It certainly has flown by!

Arrivederci!

~Christina