Familiar Faces

It’s been a few days since my last update, so I’m just going to ramble on without structure and hope you enjoy. On Tuesday, my cousin, her boyfriend, and her best friend Liz who is also currently living in Italy were waiting for me at the Bed and Breakfast on my street. I took them to all the usual places – the Spanish Steps, Via Condotti, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon. 

Throughout the day, Liz was giving me tips on places to go in Salzburg because I mentioned I’d be there over Christmas Break. She lived there for 3 months and gave me the names of a couple places I should check out. 

We had plenty of free time to roam around the city on Wednesday because I had the day off, and so we decided to go to the Vatican. The weather was surprisingly beautiful and when we got there, the line up was a disaster. I mean a COMPLETE zig zag of people from all over the world waiting to get their prayer on. This little American woman with the most adorable cream coloured jacket I have ever seen came up to us and invited us to join her tour, and so we paid the extra money to cut the line and get a little history lesson during our time inside. It was totally worth it because we didn’t wait long and we learned all the important details about the history of the Vatican, the art inside, details about previous Popes… It was interesting and I really enjoyed it. My favourite part was of course the Sistine Chapel, but there were so many sculptures, fresco's and tapestry’s to admire that the entire day was just wonderful. But more than the history and the appreciation of Catholic tradition (which I don’t follow but again, I can appreciate it) was being with people from home.

Today was my family’s last day in Rome before they moved on to tour other Italian cities, and so of course we went to the Colosseum. I’ve been waiting forever to do this and decided to wait until my family got here. I’m so happy I did because I got to enjoy it with people I know and love.

I had a really wonderful time seeing my family, familiar faces from Canada, and I loved being able to show them around my new 'home'. But it made me sad because I won't see them until June, and that's a whole seven months away.  
I believe (as well as Italians, of course) that you should enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy.