Italy, Part One

Ok. I'm going to do my best to write about our trip to Italy. It probably won't be as cool without seeing the pictures at the same time (although some from Rome are posted on facebook, with others yet to come) or without hearing it in person, but it's still awesome. I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to get a post up here after our trip, but the days have been hectic and now it's already 3 days since we've been back! Crazy. Oh well, I'm writing now. Here goes:

We landed in Rome, took a taxi to our hotel, I lost my hat somehow (and by the way, they no longer have hats at Target; however, they have swimsuits. January is the coldest month of the year and they stop selling hats? I'm really angry about that.), but eventually bought a cheap and ugly new one. We get up to our room, and it is tiny. I mean, really small. After our long long plane rides and a really long (and crappy) taxi ride, we were tired and stressed and not in a good mood. For those of you who have traveled before, I'm sure you know what I mean. We hardly had enough room to put our bags somewhere and still be able to walk through the room. On the bright side, we did have a full sized bed, not 2 small ones. Plus the room was cute and nice, just really small. Well, we took what was supposed to be a short nap and went out and about looking for the place to pick up our tickets to see the pope. It was supposedly by the Trevi fountain, which was only 2 subway stops from our hotel (the subway was only about 50 yards from the hotel, yay), but we had no address, just a general idea of where it was supposed to be. We could not find it, and no one, the police, or tourist information, had any clue what the heck we were talking about. To top things off, it started raining, and it was night, and we only had an hour to find what we were looking for because our nap took longer than we had planned. We never found it, but we did get to see the Trevi fountain on our first day in Rome, and it was super cool. Plus we bought a small umbrella. It was quite an experience, and somewhat stressful, but we didn't let it get to us because we didn't want to make a big deal about missing one thing when there were so many other amazing things we knew we would get to do. Plus, the tickets were free so we didn't lose any money on them at all. It was a little disappointing, but we got over it once we got to do some other things. The rest of that night we just ate an amazing dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel and tried to settle into a foreign country.

We didn't sleep the greatest that night, partially due to jet lag I think and partially due to excitement, but largely due to the stiffness of the bed. Which meant that we got an early start for our first full day in Rome. It worked out really nicely. Actually, we got up early every day except one in order to get out and see as much as we could and make the most of our trip. For our first full day we planned to go to the Vatican, as we had tickets for a Scavi tour in the afternoon, of the Necropolis and St. Peter's tomb underneath St. Peter's Basillica. These ones we paid for, in advance, so we definitely wanted to make sure to get to this! We spent the morning at St. Peter's, in the square and in the Basillica, wandering around, taking everything in, basically enjoying the beauty of the Basillica and the art. We saw the church part, took many pictures, and then went and found lunch. We ate the most delicious pizza we had had so far (considering we had only had it once before, at supper our first night) but not the best pizza we would have. It was cheap too, as were most of the pizzerias at which we ate. After eating lunch on the sidewalk as everyone else was doing we headed back over to St. Peter's. We still had plenty of time before our tour though, so we looked at souvenir shops on the way back and saw some things we liked and wanted to get for ourselves and others, but didn't buy anything yet. Once we got back to St. Peter's we still had time so we went to look at the tombs of dead popes, including JPII's tomb, so that was really cool impressive. The tombs are just below the church itself. Then we did the Scavi tour, which was below everything, way down. See, St. Peter's Basillica was built on a graveyard basically, where St. Peter was originally buried and then where, over the first couple of centuries of the church, really wealthy romans were entombed. So we got to see some old and cool tombs with their frescoes and actual sarcophogi and everything. It was very cool. Then, we saw St. Peter's bones, or what everyone is 99% are his bones. That was awesome too-the first pope, a person who actual lived and breathed with Jesus, only a couple of feet away.

After the Scavi tour, we headed up the hill to the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. The very long hill. Even though the Vatican is tiny, it felt like a very long walk up that stupid hill. We finally made it there and paid our admission fee to see the museum and the Sistine Chapel and went on in. We started out taking our time, figuring since we had multiple hours to get to the Chapel we could meander through the museum and see what there was to see. The museum was amazing. So much art, from old Roman statues to paintings, frescoes, and mosaics by some of the most famous artists ever. We spent a long while looking at things, and then decided we would start purposefully heading for the Sistine Chapel while still taking time to check everything out along the way, since you just follow the signs to get to the chapel and wind your way through the rooms of the museum. Well, after about another 1/2 hour or heading for the chapel, and looking at art, and not getting to the chapel, we decided to pick up our pace and only look at things that looked really interesting. Another 15 minutes later, we still aren't there, so we decide to basically stop looking at everything else so we could get to the chapel. We had already been in the museum multiple hours at this point and had seen everything major we had wanted to see except the chapel. Towards the end of the museum closer to the chapel the art started getting more and more modern and worse and worse (Eric and I both decided that no one goes to Rome for modern art and yet many of the museums and heck, even the castle we went to, all had modern art exhibits. Kindof annoyed us a little.), and we had to walk at least another 10 minutes before we got to the chapel. So if you go to Rome and want to see the Sistine Chapel and that's all, take all the shortcuts. Although that shouldn't be the only reason you go to the Vatican. There really are many amazing things to see. Just be prepared for a long and leisurely, and at times visually overwhelming, experience. It really was amazing, but the Vatican is one Roman treasure that should not be combined with too many other things--it's definitely enough to do by itself in one day. I loved it though.

After we left there, before dinner, we found a Blue Ice and had gelato (Matt had actually recommended this gelato chain so we were happy to find one) and it was amazingly delicious. I feel like I keep saying everything was amazing, but it really was. The food, especially the gelato, was possibly the best part of our entire trip. I love gelato. Especially ciaccolato (chocolate, obviously). Yum. We went back to our hotel because our feet hurt, and then headed out again for dinner. We ended up back by the Trevi fountain trying to find a place to eat around some shops that we saw since we wanted to look around at stores too. We ate another good dinner of pasta and meat (we did the multiple course thing a few times, other times just one course, and sometimes one of us would get one course and the other 2 and we would split the 2nd one). It ended up actually being one of our least favorite meals, because the pasta was not what we had expected, but it was still good. That's our first full day in Italy!

There is so much more I need to write about from our trip, but it will have to wait until later as there are other things I need to get done. Look for another post (or more) about the rest of our trip!