Roma con Brian!

Hi all, I know I have been slacking on the blogs.  Sorry!  I do have a good excuse though.  Brian came to visit me!!  We had such an incredible time together.  I’ll start with our first weekend…

 

This one was spent in Rome with Brian!  He flew in Thursday morning where we met in Rome.  And from there was started our weekend immediately.  After dropping off our stuff we walked to the Coliseum.  Seeing it in person was absolutely amazing.  Brian summed it up perfectly when he said, “it’s something I always wanted to see, but never thought I would in person.”  Upon arriving there we found out about a tour that was only 20 euro a person (the tickets alone are 8 euro).  It was so worth it because we got to learn all about the Coliseum, jump all the lines, and also got entrance plus a tour around Palatine.  It was a fantastic way to start our day but we decided to keep going after.

 

We walked all around Roma and saw some incredible (albeit “touristy”) things.  We stopped at the Trevi fountain to throw coins backwards over our shoulders for good luck.  That was easily my favorite part of the day.  It was so beautiful and much larger than I imagined.  I loved it so much that we actually went back the next night after dinner to sit and enjoy it again.  (FYI it’s absolutely worth visiting twice so you can see it once during the day and once at night, it’s breath taking both ways but totally different.)  The first day we also walked to the Pantheon, which was very impressive as well.  It’s apparently the largest self-sustaining dome in the world, and architects now still don’t know how it was made.  After the first day being long and full of walking we were ready to call it a night.

 

Of course we had to get a few delicious Italian meals along the way since it was Brian’s first time in Italy.  We went pretty basic with pizza, calzione (calzone), crossaints (cornetta’s) with ham and cheese, and gelato throughout the day.  We actually ended up skipping dinner and going to be early if you can believe it!  Just shows how tired we were.  Brian literally just got off a plane from New York, I don’t know what my excuse was.

 

The next day we headed over to Vatican City to participate in another tour we were told about the previous day.  Vatican City was absolutely incredible.  Our tour guide was fantastic and told us so many interesting facts about the history of Vatican City.  We were lead through rooms upon rooms with everything from statues and sculptures, to paintings and frescos, to maps and tapestry’s the size of a normal wall!  Everything was so beautiful and fascinating.  We got to see works by Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, and many more.

 

But of course the piece di resistance was the Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel).  Fortunately they allowed us to take pictures (no flash of course) but my pictures can’t even come close to capturing the colors, details and awe-inspiring frescos that covered the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  It would have been easy to spend all day in there, just staring at the wall piece by piece.  Of course the piece “Creation of Adam” (the one where God is reaching out to Adam and their fingers are almost touching) was beautiful.  All of it together was overwhelming though.

 

After the Sistine Chapel we walked through St. Peter’s Basilica.  Walking through there and see the tombs of all the past Popes, and the burial site of St. Peter, was a very unique experience.  You weren’t allowed to speak in there, because it was a spiritual space.  I enjoyed it a lot, but my favorite part of the Vatican City was still the Sistine Chapel.

 

That night we went out to a restaurant that our tour guide recommended to us, but we of course couldn’t find it.  After walking around for about 30 minutes we decided just to go into one that looked good to us.  While checking out the menu for a “Trattoria” (a traditional restaurant) the server came outside and asked us where we were from.  When we told him we were Americans he said, “No ones perfect!”  That sold it to us.  We ended up eating way too much delicious food, getting primi’s that our server recommended and saltimbocca, a traditional Roman veal dish.  When we thought we couldn’t get eat more, they brought over free dessert!  Definitely a fantastic way to end a great day.

 

We decided to go back to Perugia the next day, but first to go to the Spanish Steps.  It was quite a hike up them, particularly in the rain, but they were so lovely.  It was the one “touristy” thing we hadn’t gotten to do while in Rome, so it was great to see them before heading back to Perugia.  Even our train ride back was interesting.  It’s about 2 hours from Rome to Perugia and Brian and I rocked out to The Beatles the entire time!  All of the Italians may have hated us, but we enjoyed ourselves.