Roma, Italia

After we arrived in Rome from Sorrento very late at night, we checked in at our hotel and ate dinner at a restaurant in the same plaza. Also in the same plaza was the Pantheon. This was our view from dinner that night...

View of the Pantheon from dinner (it's way bigger than it looks) - our hotel is the far left building

Rome is a beautiful city with so much history. Here's what we did each day in Rome:

Day 1 // West of the River Tevere & Vatican

On our first morning in Rome, we slept in. We were exhausted from the past week and the sleep was just what we needed (however, we found out later that by sleeping in, we missed the Pope that morning in St. Peter's Square...oops...my mom was not very happy about that).

Palazzo di Giustizia

We traveled west of the River Tevere to the Vatican. On our way there, we saw Piazza Navona, Castel Sant' Angelo, and Palazzo di Giustizia (the Palace of Justice - Supreme Court). We had been told that in Rome ruins, castles, and churches pop up out of nowhere. They literally do...they are everywhere! And they are gorgeous.

We had an appointment with a private Vatican tour guide at 1:00pm. He was recommended by my mom's friend from high school who grew up in the Naples area as the "best tour guide in Rome." He certainly lived up to the hype!

For one, it was wonderful to be able to skip the lines and not travel in a giant group. But more than that, he was so informative and knew just what to show us. We began at the Vatican Museum and worked our way through Vatican City to the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica.

One of the 50+ galleries in the Vatican museum. My mom
thinks that my photography skills are lacking.
Opinions? :) I'll admit, this one could have been better...

Neither my mom nor I realized how much was in the Vatican Museum before we began (quite frankly, I didn't even know it existed). It was just packed full of sculptures, paintings, and other artifacts from Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt. And the museum was practically an ancient artifact itself, as it was built in the 16th century. I'm not sure what was more amazing: the ceilings, floors, and walls of the museum or what the museum contained! The walls and ceilings were adorned with velvet, paintings, and gold, and the floors were first or second century A.D. mosaics.

Probably my favorite artifacts in the museum were those from Egypt. Our tour guide, Giovanni, told us that red marble (kind of looks like maroon) was originally from Egypt. When the Romans found out how rare and valuable that particular marble was, they took it all, and it was used only for royal purposes. A few of the sculptures in the museum were from this red marble. It was so wonderful having Giovanni explain all of this to us in an entertaining and concise way. He even let my mom sit on an original, 2000+ year old Egyptian Sphinx (even though she wasn't supposed to). I learned more history from Giovanni than I had in any of my history classes.

Sneaking a picture of my mom on the
ancient Egyptian Sphinx

After making our way through the museum, we arrived at the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was an absolute genius. Giovanni was telling us about how he did his work and how creative/talented he was. Although the chapel was beautiful, it wasn't that much better than the walls and ceilings of the museum...everything was so amazing. I think my mom and I had our mouths hanging open the entire three hour tour.

From the Sistine Chapel we entered St. Peter's Basilica which was breathtaking (well, everything was breathtaking, but the Basilica even more so). It is huge, and every inch is covered in gold, garnishments, sculptures, etc.

However, I felt uncomfortable in the Basilica for two reasons. The first is because it felt like it was almost entirely dedicated to the papacy. There are a few crucifixes and paintings of Jesus here and there, but past popes were obviously the center of attention. I'm glad that Pope Francis is much more humble than his predecessors.

The second reason the Basilica made me uncomfortable is because of just how grandiose it was. The museum was as well, but I looked at the museum through more of a historical lens, of how things used to be. I should have expected the same from the Basilica, knowing the time period that it was built in, and the corruption in the papacy at that time - but it was still shocking to me how much the Basilica demonstrated the church's focus on money, material, and power when it was built.

One of the sculpture halls in the Vatican museum -
the walls were lined with busts and full body sculptures:
Roman on the left, Greek on the right!

In the Sistine Chapel, half of one of the sections of Michelangelo's work is dedicated to the old testament and the other to the new testament. Giovanni was pointing out how they wanted to show the difference between the time before Christ and after Christ. Michelangelo did this by depicting old testament religious leaders with lots of material possessions, and Christ shunning material possessions. Ironically, I think that the papacy missed the key message there when they re-constructed the Basilica...if Jesus were alive today, I don't think he would approve of it one bit (nor the focus on the papacy).

Regardless, the Basilica was beautiful and the history was fascinating. It was very interesting to see how they chose to build the Basilica and what they highlighted in that time (1500-1600's), from a historical perspective. I chose to view it more historically than religiously, because to view it as the utmost sacred place of worship didn't feel right to me given my reasons above.

Day 2 // East of the River Tevere & Colosseum

Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II

On our second day in Rome, we walked 21,256 steps, according to our step-counter. This is mainly because we could not for the longest time, no matter what we did, find the Spanish steps. My mom really wanted to see the Spanish steps, so we marked it on day one in Rome on our map from the hotel. We probably spent about an hour looking for them - wandering aimlessly, asking Italians that didn't know what we were talking about.

Finally, someone was able to direct us. The whole time, we had been going to the eastern side of the city, to Palazzo dell Esposizioni. In my haste marking the map, I thought that was the Spanish steps (the picture looked like it). The Spanish steps are actually at the Trinitá dei Monti, in the northern area of the city - marked Piazza di Spagna. A silly mistake by me - at least we got in a lot of walking! Unfortunately, the Spanish steps were not very impressive.

The Colosseum

We also saw the Quirinale, the residence of the president, while we were searching for the Spanish steps. We found this out after we got WiFi and were able to use Google to search what we had just seen. However, I should have gathered what it was earlier, after I asked one of the Italian guards what "that" building was and he responded "Quirinale" in a, "are you seriously asking me this question" tone. Probably similar to pointing at the White House and asking an American, "what's that?" We also saw the Monumento a Vittorio Emauele II. Unfortunately, Trevi Fountain was under repair with no water :(

Arc of Constantine

Our last landmark of the day was the Colosseum. It was amazing to see inside of it and know how old it is. However, I wasn't incredibly fond of it just because of what happened inside - the fact that Romans watched people die for their own entertainment. I just don't get it. The ruins around the Colosseum were really cool, though - especially the Arc of Constantine.



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The next morning, before we left for Florence, we ate at the BEST restaurant thus far. It was called, "il Barroccio." We found it totally randomly on a street behind our hotel. When we sat down, we were their only patrons. But the restaurant across the street was full! The entire time we were there, we watched the hostess try and get people to come to the restaurant. And no one came for at least twenty minutes. I felt so bad, and was so confused because the food was amazing. Then I looked down the street and all restaurants on our side of the street had no patrons - and every restaurant on the other side of the street was packed. The strangest thing. I made sure to leave a 5-star Yelp review after we left :)

We took a train to Florence, which was quite the experience at first. When we walked into the train station, I was approached by someone who I thought worked for the station. All she said was "can I help you?" and I asked where our platform was. She then showed us the whole way there and helped us with our bags (even when we didn't ask her to). Well, she then came onto the train with us and demanded 20 Euro for her service. It was incredibly uncomfortable and we ended up only giving her 5. Apparently, you're supposed to bargain with people that do that, but still, I did not like the experience. I thought it was so shady that she didn't tell us she would charge us, or even what she was doing. Oh well, I learned.

Beautiful sunset over the Panthon from the rooftop bar of our hotel - Arrevederci, Roma!

Rome was so wonderful, and I hope that I get to go back someday - because really you need more like a week or two to really get to know the city. So, we said "arrivederci Roma" as we drove away in the taxi at the prompting of the driver, instead of "ciao," because arrivederci means "until we meet again."