Vatican City- Rome day 4

St. Peter's encircling arms

 Sunday was a fantastically lucky day. We thought we would head over to the Vatican and try to see a few things, maybe get into St. Peter's and see mass if the lines weren't too bad. When we got there, there was a huge mob of people near the center of the square. We knew something must be happening, but didn't know when or what.

The basilica

 So we went straight into the sanctuary which wasn't at all crazy crowded and saw the beginning of mass. After seeing the inside and all its splendor, we climbed up to the cupola which involved hundreds of narrow winding stairs. From the top the view into the church was amazing as was that of the Vatican city.

Inside- the most enormous church I've ever encountered

We came down from the basilica worn out from the stairs and it seemed the crowds were growing. We made our way to the center of the square in hopes that if something were to happen, it would be around noon. And as the clock struck 12, we heard the cries and cheers from the crowd, looked up, and there was Pope Francis in the papal apartment. He came out, waved, and said a few words to the people down below. It was all in Italian, but I think the gist of it was "Hello Rome, I'm happy to be here with you. Happy Sunday and bless you all."

Francesco!!! He's very small, but he's there. 

It was such a lovely surprise and very lucky. It all felt very surreal and it was amazing how silent the whole crowd was the entire time he was speaking. With that, we felt our trip to Rome was everything we had hoped for and more.

The rest of our day was great, getting in the last few sights and then coming back to the hostel to rest and get dinner. Our dinner ended up being a sort of family style dinner in the hostel kitchen since we couldn't find an appropriate St. Patrick's thing to go to and I was seriously dehydrated and getting sick. It was still a nice way to spend out last night together.

On Monday we had until about 3pm in Rome. But it was raining and miserable so all we actually achieved was finding one of the best restaurants we had found all weekend where we ate fantastic pasta and listened to the locals and regulars next to us. We said goodbye and were out of Italy, on our flight to Geneva. I think I've now spent less than 1 hour in Geneva and it was already too much. I don't know what happened, but our flight got into Geneva around 7 or 7:30 and we had planned to take the train back to Grenoble, but we didn't worry about booking tickets because we know there are a lot of commuters between the two cities. We got to the train desk just to be told that not only were there no train to Grenoble that night, but there weren't any trains to France. The man then proceeded to tell us to go into the center of town to find a bus, which we did, only to be told by that woman that the only bus to Grenoble only left from the airport and the last one for the night was in about 30 minutes. So we sprinted back to the train that would take us to the airport and somehow made it to the airport in time to sprint around finding the desk for the bus and the bus itself. We then got to sit and catch our breath on the 2 hour bus back home. Which means we got in around 11pm- I walked into my host family's apartment and they were thrilled to hear a quick resume of my weekend before I went and passed out in my bed.