Texas aint got nothing on Rome...

When in Rome... The immense size of the city pretty much made up for all the tourists and we had an awesome time! Our first day there we took a free walking tour which showed us a lot of the sights in the same part of the city as the Trevi Fountain and The Spanish Steps. I officially love free walking tours! They give you a foundation of the city and then really let you explore the parts that you like a little more without having to pay anything :)

This is Italy's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Yea... I think its a little bit bigger and a little more impressive than the one in the US... or France... or England... or Canada (I think thats all the ones I've seen...) Like we took to saying: Texas aint got nothing on Rome... everything is truly bigger in Rome! For a few days we didn't know what this big building was though so we just called it that big white thing.

On our free tour we went by the Trevi Fountain. I had never imagined it to be so immense! The history of everything in Rome is so interesting. Everything was basically built by the Romans or a pope. The Trevi Fountain was built by one of the popes yet it still has a Roman god: Oceanous standing front and center. It was packed. It would have taken forever to try to get up to the water to throw a coin in so we decided to come back later that night when hopefully there would be less people.
The Pantheon (and no thats not the Parthenon) is now a church and a really cool one at that! The dome is gigantic! It is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. Yea... those ancient Romans knew how to do things! Inside is the tomb of Raphael and two of Italy's kings among other famous and important Romans.
I thought the fact that it was open at the top of the dome was really cool. Even though it wasn't built originally as a church, it is fitting that it is one in my opinion. Because it can obviously rain in there are drains (ancient Roman drains not new ones) and the floor both tilts gently to those drains and towards the door so that if there was a lot of rain it could be let out the door. While our tour was really good and informative I learned a little too much about the different styles of architecture for my liking. What was very interesting however was all of the Egyptian obelisks all over the city. During the Roman empire they stole hundreds of these and placed them around their city with statues or symbols of their gods ontop. Then when the catholic church gained power they replaced some of the statues with crosses or statues of saints. The mixtures of the three very diffferent cultures and religions was very interesting.

And the Colosseum! I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting but this wasn't it. Maybe it was the fact that it was just seemed to be stuck in the middle of a city and it was hard to get the angle shown in all the books but either way it wasn't disappointing.

After a dinner of pasta (Erin and I got spaghetti and lasagna and went half and half) we wandered around Rome at night. I have decided that it is at night that I like the cities the best. Most of the tourists have retired to their hotel rooms and the ones that rest seem to be the tourists most like us: more interested in culture and beauty than cramming in as many touristy things as possible. We both got a pastry, looked over the city from the Spanish steps and met some very interesting Californians... A little before midnight we made our way to the Trevi Fountain where there were far less people than before. I made my wish.

Day 2 in Rome: The Vatican

We had tickets for a tour at the Vatican museum at 2 that day but we started out early because we had heard how long the line can get. Turns out we had no problem with the line (10 minutes) and got into St. Peters Basilica in no time.

St Peters Basilica was breathtaking. It was enormous and I do not use that word lightly at all. It is the biggest Catholic church in the world but the archetecture doesn't make it seem so big. There are two "rows" of statues around the church, one above the other. From the ground they look to be the same size but apparently the top ones are 10 feet taller to make them appear to be the same size. The alter is something like 7 stories high... everything was on massive scale but seemed so intimate at the same time. We spent hours just walking around (we took another Rick Steves tour) and sat for a while in a little chapel off the main church. Being there was so powerful. It is a church that Christians around the world (Catholic or not) look to as the center of their religion. The emotion that has taken place there, the powerfulness, it was awesome.

I have always thought the Swiss guards were really cool :) Being part Swiss I joked that I was going to go up to them and start calling them my cousins... but they wouldn't let anyone get close to take a picture with them :( I feel kind of bad for them having to wear those uniforms though... apparently Michelangelo designed them. I dont know about you but personally I dont think he had much of a hand at being a clothing designer. Chanel you have new competition... the Michelangelo line is vying for the position of the top clothing company.

After our very expensive tour of the Vatican museum on which I learned that some people really should not be tour guides (ours was so bad that by the end we had "lost" seven out of the 30 or so on the tour) we ended at the Sistine Chapel. Wow. It was covered in paintings! I spent so long just looking at the picture of God giving life to David my neck started hurting.

Day 3 in Roma

Again we got up early to try to beat the lines at the Coliseum which ended up being a whole 10 minutes again. It was cool to see something I had learned so much about back when we studied ancient Roman history in 6th grade (you would be proud of me Mr. Jeager) but it really was the kind of thing I would be fine doing once in my life time. We took another Rick Steves tour but there were so many people around us that I dont think I really enjoyed it as much as I could have. After the Coliseum we went to the Roman forum which is right across the street. Its basically a huge concentration of a bunch of ruins and even after Athens was pretty cool. We then decided that we had enough of tourist attractions for one day and crossed the river to a part of town called the Trastevere where we had heard there were less tourists. The less tourists was right... but there were still plenty. We found pizza and gelato however and sat by a statue to people watch. I had half nutella and half coconut gelato... oh my gosh amazing!

Day 4 in Roma

We wandered to a the city park to get some sun and just have a rather relaxing day. With all the walking we had been doing our feet were getting really sore. The park was so cool though! There were people riding bikes, on boats, performing rollerblading shows and just walking leisurely around.

Our hostel in Rome offered free dinners to people staying there (pasta and bread) but only for weekday nights so for our last night in Rome (a saturday) we decided to go out to a restaurant and splurge a little bit on some good pasta. I had cheese tortellini with ham in a cream sauce and it was soooo good! I was a little thrown off by there being ice in my coke though... apparently the Italians actually put ice in things unlike the French.

The Romans kept their tradition of almost worshiping water like their ancestors of the Roman Empire did. There are these little "fountains" all around the city and the water is perfectly safe to drink. Once I bought a water bottle there was no need to buy another one which was really nice.

Overall I loved Rome. I could have done without all the tourists but it was really cool to see all the things I have learned so much about. I had fun trying to picture Rome in its glory. Erin and I both would like to invent a time traveling device so we could travel to a time in history and really see it even if we could not interact with the people. Rome would definitely be a city I would return to given the chance.