So we finally, finally made it to Rome and it's so ridiculously hot. So we had two hostel bookings and headed for the first of the two, only to find out that they dont take phone reseravations and dont even have the type of room that we booked. It turns out the same thing happened with our second booking. So on a hot tip we headed out of the city to try to catch the last available cabin at a camping place. Arriving just in time we caught it and saved a pile of money. We bought a bottle of wine, some bread and slept like babies... what a ridiculously long day.
Day two moved us into a tiny, hot tent at the camp site as the cabin was already reserved for the next day. So we moved over with heads hung low and headed into the city. Grabbed a wonderful panini (all sandwiches are panini's apparently over here) and just made a 5 hour tour of the city. Our tour was super informal, very informative and headed off by a cocky, Californian who "knew" how fabulous he was. Turns out the dude was really a big dork for Roman history and was really passionate about the city and the history so he gave a pretty good tour. WE saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Foutain, the Pantheon, the Anciant and Roman Forum, a famous Gothic Church (where this crazy italian old man tried to usher us out of the church several times... but our egotistial surfer persisted and tried to pull a fast one over the old dude but ducking around columns and taking another route... no go... the old dude found us but he lost he fight in the end), and finally the Coloseum, which it turns out is a Roman Catholic church.
Day three had us running (literally... thank God we had sneaks on and not sandals *wink wink* to catch a bus to Vatican City where we nearly died several times during the day. Italy is way way way too hot, it should be closed for the summer and everyone evacuated, either that or the REd Cross should provide AC because it's disgusting. Anyhow... we went with a couple of Canadian girls we met to the Vatican museum and took a tour with this great guide who is more of an art historian than a Vatican guide but we taught us a lot and it was really something to see. Got to see a real authentic Da Vinci which was a real treat for me, in the Vatican Gallery. WE saw Raphel's apartment (beautiful but he's a bit of a copy cat we hear) and of course saw the Sistine Chapel. Seriously breath taking. Everyone said it was small and built up how small it was so much that I was nearly expecting a super super tiny room,a nd granted it is small it's not that small, the ceiling is pretty damn big...Michelangelo painted a BIG ceiling, i don't care how small everyone else says it is!
So now we are hot and tired and nearly falling down so we head to St. Peter's Bacilica which is enormous and really overwhelming, lot's of religious stuff going on. We then headed for the Grotto's which had a deadly line up but we forged on. Waiting for close to two hours in a big line made us sticky and gross... can't describe the heat. Finally we saw the tombs of many old Popes and then came to the reason for the deadly line... Pope John Paul II's tomb...a quick glance and we were hearded off like cattle... two hours and all we got was 2 seconds to see... still well worth it in my opinion. By this time we were dead so we grabbed some grub and headed back.
It is here where our luck with transportation turned and we started to get messed around. We tried to reserve seats to Florence but found out that there was a planned strike on the trains the day we wanted to leave so we decided we had to leave a day early or we'd end up missing Florence all together. So we are missing the catacombs outside Rome... stupid trains!
|  | 
|
