Italy 3..0

Rome

Our adventure in Rome all started with just trying to get to the B&B. It was just up the street from St. Peter's Basilica, but tucked away in a neighborhood. NO one seemed to know where it was, even the taxi driver, which we caved in and got since we were tired of walking around aimlessly. So yes, once again gelato was a reward for the tireless effort.

Since we hadn't done enough walking for the day, we headed off to see the sites.....Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, and the Colosseum as well as some other fountains and buildings. Trevi Fountain was pretty cool, a little smaller than I thought it would be and super crowded.....too crowded for me liking. Lots of people tossing coins over their shoulder making wishes...my favorite part there was watching people not tossing their coins far enough to make it into the fountain so hitting people instead of the fountain...guess wishes don't come true if you miss eh? The Colosseum was pretty amazing....we arrived there days after they had a big riot and a little late in the evening so we didn't go in just walked around.

The next day we had tickets to see the Necropolis - "city of the dead" under St. Peter's Basilica. It was pretty cool, too bad I am not Catholic or else it probably would have been even more spectacular. We had a few priests in our group and when we went back upstairs to the "shrine" they have St. Peter the tour leader had them lead everyone in a prayer......yeah, just a bit awkward for E and myself as we just kinda stood there. After we went inside the Basilica and looked around a bit before we left to go see the Vatican. We found out later that Michelangelo's Pieta was in there as well, but missed it with the crowds of people there.

We walked to the Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel and the museum, with the other hundreds of people that were there. I felt like we were cattle being herded around from one room to the next. One little girl behind us said, "I can't see anything but peoples butts", yup that was my entertainment for the hour.....as we were herded to the next room. By the time we got to the Sistine Chapel I had no idea we were even there.....although the security people kept telling everyone to SHHHHH and be quiet, no one was really listening......and there were no pictures allowed, but everyone was trying to sneak a pic....I just had to get outta there....too many people and too close of quarters......The Sistine Chapel was cool of the parts I did look up to see, but way too crowded.

E said there was a good place that all the nuns go to for gelato that was suppose to be close to the Vatican....not sure we found it the right one, but we found a busy gelato place so we stopped by to get some. Had some pizza for dinner and some more gelato for dessert, kinda as a last meal type deal before we head home.

Unfortunately, we aren't going to get outta Italy, since we are standby, so we are off to Zurich in the morning to try to catch our flight home at least to the states......