Italia - {Rome}

We made it!  The drive from Florence to Rome (with the brief stop in Orvieto) went very smoothly.  Really the only scary driving experience was in Florence.  No Bueno.  And I can only imagine if we had tried to drive in Rome, yikes, I don't know if our marriage would survive that one.  We took the Fiat straight to the Hertz at the airport when we got to Rome and caught a taxi into Rome to our hotel.  On the drive to the hotel we drove right past the cathedral and were both in awe.  I knew we were in for a cool couple of days.  We got settled at the hotel, cleaned up a little, and were off for our first adventure.  Our hotel was in a pretty good location and we could walk pretty easily to all the places we wanted to go.  First stop, the Spanish steps.  To be totally honest, I don't really know what the significance of said steps are, or really why they're so popular, but wowza, every time we passed these steps (which was actually quite a lot over the next few days because it was kind of on the path to get to everything else) the were completely packed with people!  I mean packed!  I'm just realizing that I don't think I even have a single picture at the steps.  Oops.  Oh well, you'll just have to take my word for it.  Not super exciting.  Pretty much just steps.  After the steps, we made our way to the Trevi fountain.  I won't try very hard to give a history lesson on the sites we visited because to be completely honest I suck at history and would probably be totally off on anything I tried to say.  Basically the Romans built aqueducts to bring water to the city and then built large amazingly sculpted statues at the endpoint of the aqueduct.  And this is one of those :)  I did throw a coin in over my shoulder, I'm not gonna lie.  Again, extremely packed with people.  Next stop was the Pantheon.  It was huge and amazing!  It was built as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome and is now used as a Roman Catholic church.  Unfortunately it was closed when we got there so we didn't get to go in.  Apparently it's one of the best preserved of all the Roman buildings.  It is astounding that the Romans had the technology to build these structures that survived until now.  And the city is just full of them!  After walking around the Pantheon for a bit we strolled the streets until we found a place to eat.  It was kind of a mediocre meal unfortunately, Trent was not at all impressed with his spaghetti and meatballs.  The gelato we had later though, that did not disappoint.  So refreshing.  I was told in order to keep up strength for all the walking we would do we needed to be sure and have gelato at least 3 times a day.  I didn't want to lose my strength, so I had to follow that advice.  We walked around a little more and eventually made our way back to the hotel.  Facetime with the kids, then sleepy time (for me anyway.  I didn't have any trouble adjusting to the 8 hour time difference and slept great every night.  Trent, on the other hand, would wake up at like 3 AM and be awake for a few hours every night :()

The Trevi Fountain

This is the massive door to the Pantheon.

The Pantheon

1st full day in Rome.  So somehow we chose quite possibly the worst 2 days to be in Rome.  This day (April 30th) was one of the busiest days of the year in Rome because basically all of Europe has the following day off for Labor day, so they all vacation in Rome!  Our tour guide at the Vatican told us she's lived there for 12 years and has never seen crowds like she did that day, awesome!  Which brings me to why the next day (May 1st) was also the worst day to visit Rome.  It's a holiday and it's 1 of only 3 days a year (the others being Easter and Christmas) that EVERYTHING is closed!  So, if you plan to visit Rome, remember to avoid May 1st!  Now back to our day.  An awesome family in our ward that  lived in Italy a while back had us over for dinner the Sunday before we left to give us all the advice they could. They told us one place they always tell people to visit that is not your typical tourist destination is the Capuchin Crypt.  It is a series of small rooms beneath a church that contains the skeletal remains of 4000 bodies of Capuchin friars.  Very interesting, totally disgusting!  You aren't allowed to take pictures in there, so I had to steal a couple off the web to show you.  I was totally grossed out/creeped out by it.

After the bone church I wanted to hit up Via Condotti (the Rodeo Dr. of Rome).  The street of high end stores like Gucci, Prada, Dolce & Gabana, Luis Vitton, etc.  This street is obviously mostly for window shopping for me, but still fun!  Trent did spoil me and buy me a Gucci bag.  We had tickets to the Vatican Museum at 1 pm so we started to make our way there.  It wasn't super close, but we had time so we decided to just walk.  We made it and were sooo happy we had reservations with the tour group and got to skip the massive line that wrapped clear around the walls surrounding it.  We found our guide, strapped on our little audio devices and started the tour.  There aren't words to describe this place.  Everything is huge and elaborate.  Every wall and ceiling of every museum is covered in paintings, sculptures, or some form of art.  We spent a good 3 or 4 hours here and didn't see everything.

After walking through a few of the museums we went to the Sistine Chapel.  No pictures allowed in there (so they say, that didn't stop the majority of the people in there from taking them).  Then it was on to St. Peter's Basilica.  The Catholic church believes this to be the burial site of Peter, claiming his tomb is directly below the altar.  This place is huge!

Here's the view of the dome from one of the courtyards at the museum.  I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but you can climb to the top of the dome and you can see the little tiny people of at the top.  

This is the view right as you walk in.  It's hard to tell just how large it is, but if you look at the people standing near the column on the right you can see the comparison.  That alter all the way forward and in the very center is where it is said Peter's tomb lies.

You can't even begin to imagine the size of this place.  It's just crazy.  Those Catholics really go all out.  

By the end of the tour we were both completely exhausted!  It was hot, and we had been on our feet since leaving the hotel that morning.  It was now about 4:30 I believe, and we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast that morning at about 9:30 (we did each have a can of diet coke right before we started the tour).  I really wanted to just get a taxi and find my bed (and definitely get some room service).  There was a long line of people at the taxi station thing (I'm retarded when it comes to trying to get a cab).  So we decided to walk a little ways and try and find a taxi up the street.  Well, somehow that turned into walking all the way back to our hotel (which was probably about 2.5 miles)!  We were beat.  We ordered room service (ALOT of food!), ate and relaxed the rest of the night.