ROME

rome was our favorite city. but like the saying "rome wasnt built in a day" rome can't be seen in a day. we were running the entire day. after the two hour train ride to actually get to rome, we ran to the metro station and took it to the colluseum, which is RIGHT across the street from the metro station.

we walked outside and there it was plain as day among all the traffic and people. it was crazy. the line was long to go inside and since we had heard it wasn't worth the 11 euros to go inside, we just walked around the whole thing and took a bunch of pictures. the colluseum was the monument that chris was most excited to see and thankfully he wasn't disappointed.

while we were contemplating going inside the colluseum vs the vatican, a local scam artist told us that the wait was longer that 3 hours and the doors were closed at noon {it was 11:00 at the time, so basically he was telling us there was no chance to see the vatican and that we should do his colluseum tour instead}. we decided to head over to the vatican anyway just to check it out. we did wait in a horribly long line but not for three hours, it was more like 40 minutes. while we were waiting it began the downpour that would continue until long after we left. the vatican chapel and museum were amazing. it took us about 3 hours to get through. it was absolutely unreal the amount of amazing art.

this is a statue of a guy who was a famous doctor {don't remember his name, but the snake staff is a symbol for medicine}

there was a huge long hallway just full of roman and greek statues.

view to the outside from inside the chapel/museum at the vatican

this one's really hard to see, but it's the portion of the sistine chapel where god is reaching out to adam

all i could think about was the poor bloke who had to hang from the ceiling to paint it all. like i said before about catholic cathedrals, it was super dark, so many of the pictures did not turn out well. my favorite part was the sistine chapel of course. there were hundreds of people in there while we were in there and i couldn't believe how quiet it was. every so often it would start getting loud and the vatican officials whould blow their whistles and literally shush everyone. it was actually quite amusing. after the vatican we hopped back on the metro. we didn't have much time left so we decided to see the spanish steps and the trevi fountain. we didn't actually know we were on the spanish steps until afterward because it was so rainy, but i can tell you that i slipped and fell down like 6 of the spanish steps. they were made of marble and my smooth bottom flip flops didn't agree with them in the rain. when we finally found the trevi fountain we were both soaked and cold. but we had to do the touristy thing and toss the coins into the fountain. {stories say that if you toss a coin into the trevi fountain and make a wish that you will ultimately return someday...hopefully}.

chris tossing his coin in for good luck

i sure hope we get to go back someday!

things we didn't see that we wished we could have: the pantheon, st. peter's basilica and so much more