Spring Break-Rome

After a great trip to Barcelona we headed to Rome for the rest of the week.  We took off early in Barcelona and landed in the early afternoon in Rome.  It was pouring rain when we landed which made the adventure all the more fun.  We tried to find our hotel and it was not exactly an easy task.  On top of all that, there was another language barrier but this time I had never taken even a high school class on it.   We were lost and could not find our hotel and it was pouring.  We saw 4 other tourists that got off the metro with us and we passed them about 4 times walking around this random neighborhood, each time we were laughing with them cause we both knew we were completely lost.  As we were walking, frustrated and wet, we looked just mad until we made eye contact with a random lady and she could tell we needed help and she pointed us in the direction.  However, this right direction was not our hotel, it was another one.  Eventually we found our hotel.  It was still raining and at this point it started to storm. We went into the city center and grabbed a pizza which was great. We could not walk around because of the rain so we headed to our neighborhood for the night.

Wednesday we headed over to the Coliseum which was an amazing experience.  Here are some pictures from it.

After the Coliseum we headed over to the ruins of Palatine Hill.  It is another small city like but completely ruins.

Again it was rainy and this took up most of the day for us.  We walked around the area and then headed to dinner.  They eat very late in Italy, much like Spain, and after dinner we headed home for the night because we had to get up early in the morning to see the Vatican.

Thursday came and we meet up with a bunch of people from group that have been in Italy.  We went and saw Saint Peter's Basilica and the Vatican. Here are some of the pictures.

The Basilica is enormous, they say it can fit 50,000 for mass if needed.  

After the Basilica we headed over to the Vatican city walls and entered in.  It is huge and we went to the Sistine Chapel and museum of art.  There are thousands of huge religious art pieces before you enter the Sistine.  You can't take pictures and they are very strict about it.  After the Vatican we headed down and walked a lot of the town.  We headed down to the river and saw the Castel San Angelo which dates back and is very cool.  It sits right on the river.

Castle San Angelo.

We continued our walk and headed to Piazza Navano which is a really artsy part of town.  There are people doing all sorts of drawings and art work and selling them to the tourists.  It was a neat little place.  By this time it was getting later so we continued our walk over to the Trevi Fountain. 

This is the famous fountain.

We had some dinner and then headed home.  Friday was a day of walking around the city and then we had lunch.  It was a nasty day of rain but we had a night set up with one of Libbie's relatives who lives in Rome.  We got picked up and shown around the city by Walter, the husband of her relative.  He was born and raised in Italy and he showed us around before taking us to have an amazing meal.  It was sooooo good.  We headed home and had to get up really early to catch our flight back to London.  

Overall it was a great trip.  Totally different then London in every aspect of life, but it was nice to see different traditions.  

Cheers

Jimmy