Italy stop #1: Rome

Hey everyone, sorry for the big delay on the blog. Had to go through about 3000 pics and do some touching up and photostitching on them. Anyways this is gonna be a long post since we were in Italy for about 10 days, so lets go.

We started off Friday night by taking the night train from Zurich to Rome. It was pretty sweet since we got beds (Dima and I took the top bunks, Keegan and Annie in the middle bunks, and 2 other people on the bottom. It was definately the nicer of the 2 night trains we took, but more on that later. Unfortunately for us, it was an Italian train and thus had to be late the mandatory 20 minutes (1 hour in our case).



We finally arrive at around 1pm ish in Rome and the first thing we went to was the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel, amoung other stuff. Unfortuately for us, the Museum closed at 1:30 and therefore we didn't make it in time (stupid delayed train). So, since we were around the Vatican we took a quick peak in St. Peter's Basilica (formerly the lastest christian church or something). It was really nice in there with a lot of nice sculptures, including the Pietà, sculpted by Michelangelo. The dome (and possibility the whole church) was designed by him as well.








We quickly went to the hostel to drop off our bags before return back to the church. This time we went to get our Tickets for midnight mass with the Pope. after we wandered around and went to find some food. I had some cannelloni with veal off some tourist menu but the portions were small and had all these extra fees, so that sucked.

We returned at about 7pm to line for to get in the church and the line was already like 800 people long or so. We waited in line until about 11:30 when they let us in. The line at the end was HUMONGOUS!! It stretched around the whole church a couple times.

It was my first service so it was pretty neat I guess. Probably would mean a lot more to a religious person, but was still cool. I was surprised they let people take pics and movies and stuff during the whole thing, so I took that my my advantage and recorded as much stuff as I could. They sang O come o ye faithful in latin or something, don't know if that's a normal thing or not, but it was the only thing I recognized during the whole thing (about 2 hours long). At the end the Pope and the his minions and stuff went to the Nativity display (which we were sitting right beside) so got a good view (and photo/movie) of the Pope. He was like 5 feet away or so, was interesting.



We got out at around 2 and proceded to walk home (no more transit). Along the way we passed by the St. Angelo's Castle.



The streets were totally empty so it was kinda weird. We eventually got back to the hostel at around 4am where some crazy Italian lady started yelling at us when we walked into our room (we didn't even make any noise). She then grab some kid to get them to translate to us or something, but they both only spoke Italian so it was rather comical watching them trainslate from Italian to Italian to us. After that we went to sleep when we were woken up at around 7 but that crazy lady again when she just started yelling and screaming and stuff. Italians are messed up people.

Sunday was a lazy day since everything was closed (being x-mas). We pretty much just spent the day walking around seeing all the free ancient sights. On the way to the first place Keegan almost got pickpocketed as he noticed his strap around his key was hanging out of his pocket. We got off and started searching people around us to see if they succeeded in taking anything, We grab one guy (which we think was trying to steal stuff) but he ran for hte next train and go in just as the doors were closing. Luckily nothing was missing but sucked that the dirty bastard got away (so far the people of italy suck). The first site we went to was the Trevi Fountain. This thing was friggen huge so that was cool. They said if you throw in 1 coin it garentees a safe return back to Rome and a second coin grants a wish. Personnally I tihnk it's a ploy to get some extra spending money, but I did it anyways (not that anyone can buy anything for 2 euro cents).



We also saw the Spanish Step, which are supposed to be very beautiful but there was construction near and no flowers (only during spring and summer) so it was just a fancy staircase.



We wandered into a few churches (there's like a million of them in Rome) and eventually got to Plaza Veneiza which has the Tome of the Unknown soldier and some government building (you could tell by the protesters near it). The old City was near here as well but that was being saved for the next day and it was getting dark so we went back to the hostel for a bit. There was some crazy American girl going crazy there when she found out she blew all her money and didn't have enough to go to some other places and started flipping out, I guess it wasn't a very merry x-mas for here.





The whole day did not seem like christmas day at all since there was no family around (and I opened all my presents early, thx for the Jersey and swiss army knife :) ). We decided to sleep early since we didn't get much the previous night and had to wake up early.

On Monday we headed for the old city and got in to the Palitine/forum before it opened (and therefore got in for free). It was nice having the whole place open to just us and let us take a ton of pics. Circus Maximus (charot races, christian execution place) was here as well. The forum was pretty much the hangout place for everyone back then. There were aquaducts and stuff around as well.







The next stop was the Colosseum. We bought our tickets and went in (unfortunately the ticket covers Palitine/forum so we ended up paying for it all in the end, darn.

The Colosseum was pretty neat and we learned a bunch of interesting facts such as:
- What we see isn't the outer wall, there's a white line around the place that marks the old outer wall, but it collapsed during an earthquake a long time ago.
- It was the first retrackable roof building in the world. a couple hundred people would raise a cloth cover when needed. It was needed for rain as well as ventilation (people smelled bad then, people dying smells bad, and they all ate raw onions and garlic).
- The small rectangular windows at the tops was for people to spray flower pedels and perfumes to kill the smell a bit.
- Women weren't along to sit and go to the wash room, had to go off the top of hte building (ewww).
- Gladiators couldn't kill unless the emperor said yes or no. Emperor usually listed to the crowd. If that was fairly mixed, the virgins would have the say (since they were pure and stuff).
- Gladiators got their name because the sword is called a Gladius.
- It only took 15 minutes to seat all the people (15000 or something like that).
- Michelangelo stole all the seats to be used in the building of St. Peter's Basilica (Pope place).



After getting a bunch of pictures we wandered around the forum a little more as well as around Plaza Venieza.



Afterwards we went to Plaza Nuova where the ancient track was as well as where they held boat races back in the day. Now theres a nice fountain there.

We also went to St. Pietro Church to see the Moses sculpture by Michelangelo as well as some other church (St. Maria Maggiore).



On the way to the train we saw a Lamborghini Murcielago so we took a bunch of pics :)



We took the train that night to Naples thus ending our time in Rome.