We arrived in Rome today via train, and I can already tell I’m gonna like this city better than Venice. It is definitely full of tourists, but it feels way more spacious and real. We decided to walk from the train station to our B&B which may or may not have been a mistake depending on how our feet feel in the morning, but it was a nice albeit toasty (90 degrees!) trek. The B&B owner showed us up to our room, and we had to take the elevator up — smallest, creepiest elevator I’ve ever been in. Like both Kevin and I and one bag could fit in. You manually closed to sets of doors behind you and then had to manually open the doors when you arrived on your floor after feeling like the elevator cord was snapping. Never again… I had tears in my eyes when I walked on and when I walked off. Four flights of stairs it is! Anyways… we dropped our bags and immediately began exploring crossing a bunch of items off my list. Kevin is infamous for arriving in a city and blowing through my items which I thought would take much longer – I guess this is a good thing?!
Caption: Elevator of Death
First stop was the Trevi Fountain since it was actually between the train station and our B&B. I’m not sure why, but I always imagined this massive square with this massive fountain. While the fountain was massive, it was the smallest piazza (square) with so many people crammed in. You couldn’t even get close to it — although we may try to stop by again one of these evenings to toss a coin in. We ended up meeting a couple that live 15 minutes from us in Creve Coeur, MO, and we exchanged pictures – as in they took ours and we took theirs. We were still trying to get our barrings here since we are waiting for pickpockets to attack – it seems like every other sign is warning us of them, so when this couple approached us to take their picture, I wasn’t sure if they were being nice or causing a distraction for their friend to take our wallet. Turns out they were fine, but sadly we have to be that cautious every time. Apparently gypsies like to throw babies at you causing a distraction, because you are instinctively going to try to catch it. Although jokes on them, I don’t have any maternal instincts so the baby is gonna fall down. No joke — there was a baby on the train that was screaming bloody murder and all the women jumped up looking to see what they could do, and I’m just over here reading my book.
Caption: Trevi Fountain
Next we headed to the Pantheon which is really, really pretty! And free which is a big deal here since everything is so expensive!
After the Pantheon we headed into country number 6 of the trip: Vatican City. If you didn’t know, Vatican City is it’s own country inside Italy, and it’s guards are Swiss Guards who look like jesters (see picture below). The Vatican was bigger than I expected which very grand buildings all around St. Peter’s Basilica which is just massive.
Caption: St Peter’s Basilica on the right. This picture shows about half of the Vatican City. We did not tour the Basilica as I did not have proper attire (skirt/dress/etc), however ingenious women were wrapping scarves around their shorts giving the illusion of a dress. Seriously genius – and I will definitely remember that the next time our adventures require a skirt/dress.
Caption: Swiss Guards in their funny looking outfits. Their sole job is to protect the pope and secure the premises of Vatican City, and they were surprisingly young.
On the way back to the B&B we saw the Area Sacra which were ruins of four Roman temples and we saw the Castel Sant’Angelo (St Angelo’s Castle).
Nestled back at ‘home’, we made ourselves some pb&j sandwiches and are now off to bed. 20,000 steps in one day (after 8 days previously of that or more steps) makes for two very tired children. Until tomorrow =)
