Happy Republic Day!

So today is Republic Day here in Italy, or the day that Italy decided to become a Republic instead of a Monarchy by a referendum vote.  To say the least it was a pretty big deal.  Normally the streets are busy and shops are bustling as we head to class at 8:30 in the morning.  Today there were only a handful of cars on the streets and most of the public transportation was not running at full force.  We were not able to go out and enjoy any of the parades or anything despite being let out of class an hour early because most of the festivities had actually ended by that time, but we were able to find a small cafe where they were showing a replay of the events.  It was pretty much a full blown military parade, with just about every imaginable branch of the Italian military present.  I'm not kidding either, they had their k9 units in the parade, boats from their coast guard on the back of trucks, and even some of their missiles and robotic drones.  It was pretty cool, and the event ended with a flyover of 9 planes trailing smoke in the tricolors of the flag.  Yay republicanism!

Anyhow the past couple days have been fun.  2 days ago now, we decided to go for a night trip just around the city to see what we could find.  What we did find was a very cool little plaza tucked away in a neighborhood somewhere off the beaten path.  We didn't stick around long as we wanted to head toward the Vatican and see it at night so we wondered back until we found the Tiber.  The Tiber was beautiful that night for whatever reason, it was smooth enough to basically be a mirror of all the lights along its length which led to some cool pictures.  We followed this wonderful mirror almost all the way across the city to the Vatican where we cut inland to find a wonderful view of the Basilica.  We took loads and loads of pictures and went down into the plaza of st. peter with almost no one else there, so we had the place to ourselves.  Actually thats not entirely true, we actually saw a limo on the way there just outside the Vatican that looked straight out of a Sweet 16 show on MTV.  And lo and behold out jumped a bunch of teenage girls taking pictures and being stupid outside the Vatican.  One was even wearing a tiara.  *huge eye roll*  After we had recovered from the stupidity of such an action we strolled around the square looking for things for Angles and Demons and taking pictures of the Basilica.  Lastly on our way back we walked over to the Castle Sant Angelo where we crossed the bridge that is talked about in the Angles and Demons book again.  It was really cool and had a bunch of statues of angles on it, making again for lots of cool pictures.  After that we made our way home and slept forever.

After forever we got up and went on our class trip to the Gallery Borghese which is in the equivalent to the central park of Rome, which happened to be full of wonderful tidbits of art.  I also learned that my favorite sculptor of  all time is Bernini.  They had some of his early work there and it utterly blew me away with the amount of emotion and detail he was able to put into his art.  Just look at the face on his take of David.

Bernini's David

The emotion there just blew me away.  Anyhow they had some other really cool painting on the second floor, including one with a unicorn, but after this everything i felt was a little underwhelming.  Overall I have gained new respect for art through this trip, which I am very happy about, so it was a good day.  

Oh!  I also saw my first car accident, and it took 1 1/2 weeks.  I'm actually surprised that it took that long seeing how crazy all Italians are while driving, but hey it was a cool cultural thing.  And with that I must now finish my paper.