Rome, Italy

We started our first evening in Rome by going to the supermarket and having THE best dinner we’ve had since I don’t know when…it was only tuna and salad but since it had been a while since we had eaten such fresh ingredients we were in heaven!! Our first day in the actual city took us on a Vatican City walking tour, which we were both excited about. Even though I’m not religious, I thought when in Rome….ba-doom-ching! Haha I promise I won’t use that cheesy line again! Anyways, we had an American girl who seemed pretty cool but we soon discovered she was quite annoying…reason being is that she likened everything to pop culture somehow. I’d really like to give you all examples, but due to a number of family members reading this I think it’d be best if I saved them for one on one conversations. Oh one that is not too x-rated is that she referred to St Peter’s Basilica as the Pope’s crib (Grandma’s crib slang for home/house). Yeah. She was tops. But apart from her what we saw was fantastic. She gave a rather rushed but general run down of how the Vatican City came about then took us over the Bridge of Angels, which has a statue representing each step of the Passion of the Christ. Then down into St Peter’s Basilica. It is huge!! We went into the Vatican Museum as this is how you get to see the Sistene Chapel. But first we got to see some of the art work in the museum, sculptures, the map hallway and the tapestry room. The guide briefly told us about these things before talking us through the Sistene Chapel painting. This was done outside of the chapel as you are not allowed to talk or take photos of the paintings once you are there. We finally went into the Chapel and it is truly amazing. I cannot believe that one man painted all of that in 2 years and in such a bad body position. Just looking up at the ceiling for 10mins hurt, imagine doing that for 3 years!! No wonder Michelangelo ended up a cripple. This is where our tour ended and we were on our own. We decided to head up to the top of the Basilica to look out over Rome…not as cool as the Eiffel Tower especially since we had to walk up these tiny stairs in the dome…but still not a bad sight at all. We also went down into the Basilica and it is even more impressive on the inside. There is gold leaf everywhere, sculptures galore, paintings and mosaics. At the beginning of the Dome there is lettering done in mosaics and these are apparently 6ft tall…holy smokes! But this is where we ended our day.

The next day we did a Roaming tour of the city with a much better guide. This was a general all over tour and took us to Palentine Hill, the Pantheon, Colosseum, Roman Forums and lots more, I just can‘t remember them all! But we did get a bucket load of history over the 4 hours. Rome is so cool! Our guide also gave us some other sites to go and see so over the next 2 days we set out to find them. One was a 12th Century church which had a 4th Century church under it and then under that church there was a 1st Century house and cult alter…awesome. Also saw St Peter’s Basilica through a keyhole…bit hard to explain but trust me it was cool! We also saw the Spanish Steps and the Trevie Fountain. I think that is about it for the sight seeing things.

We were really disappointed in Rome’s food as everything was over priced and shit. We got ripped off a couple times at dinner and even got yelled at by a waiter…so our opinions of Italians was not the best. By the time our 5 nights were up we were definitely ready to leave but before we did we made sure we saw the Colosseum again…this building is just by far the greatest we have seen on our trip.