Roma, Italy

Day 1:
We arrived in Rome at about 8am. When we arrived in Rome, our first challenge was to find our way to our hotel. We new that our hotel was near the train station so we wanted to find a bus or train to take us there. At the bus stop, there was a big crowd of people waiting. A man came over and said that there was a bus over there so all of the people starting following him so we did the same. (When in Rome, do as the Romans do) When we got to the bus, we loaded our luggage under the bus and got on. We thought it was strange that we hadn't bought a ticket yet. Once we boarded the bus, I said to Eric that it would be funny if this turned out to be a tour group. Once we were seated, the man who directed us to the bus got on and started counting. When he saw Eric and me, he told us that we were not in his group. We asked him if this was the bus that went to the train station. He replied that no, it was a tour group. We realized that we had gotten on the bus with a Turkish tour group. We quickly told Holly and Michael that this was the wrong bus and that we needed to get off.

After that embarrassing moment, we decided that we needed a code word for when an embarrassing situation came up. "Banana" became the code word, and I'm embarrassed to admit that we ended up using the code word several times.

After we found the correct bus, we arrived at the train station. We found our hotel and our rooms turned out to be quite nice. They were small but clean with a nice bathroom complete with a bidet. Since this was one of our days in Rome, we cleaned up and headed out. We stopped for some Roman pizza at a nearby cafe. Then, we decided to head to the Spanish Steps and get some gelato! The Spanish steps were a nice place to sit, eat gelato and people watch. Next we headed to the Trevi Fountain. It was amazing. The whole area was much larger than I would have imagined. It is believed that if you throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, you will return to Rome again. When our flight was delayed, people joked that it was because we had put a coin in the fountain and now we were returning to Rome.

After the fountain, we headed to the Pantheon. Again, we were amazed by the size of this monument. Here we also saw the tomb of Raphael. After this we headed to dinner. The restaurant that we were planning to go to turned out to be closed so we headed to a Piazza and found a place to get pizza.


Day 2:

After a wonderful breakfast at the Hotel Crosti, the four of us headed to the Galleria Borghese. After getting lost a few times, we found our way to an enormous park. The museum was located inside the park. We took a tour of the museum and then, Eric and I left a little early so we could take a tour of the park.

After that, we found a grocery store and picked a snack and headed to see "Ancient Rome." Our first stop was the Colosseum. It turns out that this was also the day of the Rome Marathon which started and ended in front of the Colosseum. After walking a long, long way to get around the marathon, we found our way in to the Colosseum. It was amazing. We took the audio tour which gave us a nice overview of the history. After the Colosseum we headed to Palentine Hill. From these ruins, we were able to get views of the Forum and Circus Maximus. Finally, things began to shut down so we found a restaurant across the street from the Colosseum to have a cup of coffee. We were enjoying the view of the Colosseum so much that we stayed for dinner. It was great watching it get dark and seeing the Colosseum light up.

Day 3:
During our final day in Rome, we headed to Vatican City. Our biggest mistake was not making a reservation for the Vatican museum. We waited in line for 2 hours to get in. The museum was far bigger then we could have imagined. We started out trying to see most of the museum, but finally gave up and headed for the Sistine Chapel. It was breathtaking. I don't know if it was the beauty or the fact that we were actually standing in the Sistine Chapel. After this we headed to St. Peter's. Eric had reached his breaking point with lines and crowds so he waited outside and took pictures while I went inside with Holly and Michael. It was overwhelming inside. The piece that was most moving to me was the "Pieta," which was sculpted by Michelangelo.

I headed out early. Eric and I decided to meet up with Holly and Michael the next day for breakfast so that we could get in last things that we wanted to do. Eric and I got some gelato and slowly made our way back towards our hotel. We decided we would find a little trattoria, pasta restaurant, and then take a tour of fountains. The fountains looked quite beautiful at night. Eric enjoyed taking some, well several, pictures.

Rome in three days was quite a whirlwind of activity. It was hard to even remember what we did.