Another ancient column, another priceless work of art...

Europe is really old. Like seriously.

We're talking like almost Abraham Lincoln old. Whoa.

I can already feel myself becoming desensitized to all the incredible things here, simply because they are everywhere. Particularly in Rome, you can't spit without hitting the fallen capital from an ancient Roman column (people use them as benches because they're everywhere). You can't take a step without running face first into a wonderfully ornate Renaissance church that anywhere else would be visited by tourists from miles around but here is just another landmark on your way to an even bigger, even more spectacular site. It's overwhelming, but amazing.

I've been in Rome for three full days now, and the city's already become more familiar to me. It is possibly the smallest city that I've visited in the past week. Central Rome is easily walkable from one end to the other; it takes only about 30 minutes to walk from my hotel in Trastevere in southeastern Rome to the Villa Borghese - a huge park in northern Rome. The streets are so ridiculous that they're funny. Almost all are cobblestone, and were never designed to have cars on them. Buildings are packed closely together, and I suppose that Romulus and Remus had never heard of a grid when they built their first walls on the Roman hills. It's practically useless to pay attention to the names of roads; they change frequently and dead-end often. You must simply pick the direction that you want to go and try to stay faithful to that direction. Because of this, maps are virtually unnecessary and quite unhelpful. All you need is a direction and a good eye for landmarks, of which there are plenty.

We've already seen a lot of the big sites. Yesterday we traveled to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. The Forum is incredible. A huge swath of excavated ground with toppled columns, arches, and temples. Naturally, the best preserved buildings are the ones that the Christians turned into churches (there are crosses everywhere, even inside the Colosseum itself). It's interesting that the ancient sites all sit about 10 meters below the current ground level. This area has been inhabited for so long that people simply built on top of ancient ruins, causing the level of the ground to rise over time. As a result of this, it is very difficult to dig in Rome (for utilities and public transportation) because as soon as the first shovel goes in, ancient ruins are inevitably discovered and care must be taken. It's strange to think that we are walking in the same places that people have walked for thousands of years, often on the exact same roadways. In the Forum, I took the opportunity to stand at the rostrum, where Cicero delivered his orations and where Marc Antony incited the crowds to avenge the death of Caesar. Chills up the spine.

Today I visited St. Peter's Square. When I got there, il Papa was just finishing his Sunday address to the crowds, unfortunately by video screen since he is still at his summer residence in central Italy. I couldn't quite understand what he was saying, but it had a lot of "Viva l'Italia! We're #1!" stuff in it. The crowds loved it, needless to say. St. Peter's is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Perhaps this is due to my childhood conditioning or my deep-seated (though strenuously denied) Catholicism, but it was quite incredible. Michaelangelo's dome rises up over Bernini's colonnade and leaves you absolutely speechless. I'm going to try to get an audience someday soon. For whatever reason, the thought of seeing (or fingers crossed, touching!) the Pope almost makes me want to pray. Almost. Plus it would make my grandma the single happiest woman in the world.

Well, more to come soon. Lots of stories to tell about the various European capitals that I've visited and surely even more when school starts tomorrow. Stay tuned!