My Favorite Things in Rome!!

The Pantheon
Inside Pantheon
GELATO!!
I loved so many things about Rome it is hard to pick my favorites. Everything we did was fun and exciting. Most of all I loved the atmosphere and feel of the city. The cobblestone streets, endless restaraunts, and the huge buildings that contain so much history. The Pantheon was one of my favorites because it was less than 5 minutes from our hotel. We walked by it almost everyday and we even went inside. It is now a church and it's huge columns are hard to stop looking at.

We also enjoyed a lot of good food. Everyday we had pizza and pasta. I never got tired of it though. The best thing I ate was of course the gelato!!! It is basically ice cream only better. We had gelato everyday and sometimes twice a day. I was in heaven. The trip was wonderful and it was especially great to share the experience with my family. I am one lucky girl!

More Churches & The Holy Stairs

St. John Lateran

On Saturday we headed out to see the last things on our list for Rome. We started at St. John Lateran the Pope's home church. This was one of the most beautiful churches we saw. Inside it had statues of all the apostles and my favorite statue of Mary and Jesus. Across the street was the Santa Scala or Holy Staircase. These are believed to be the stairs Jesus walked up before his trial in front of Pontius Pilot. The staircase was among one of the many relics St. Helen brought to Rome in c.326 AD. Now covered in walnut wood you may only climb the staircase on your knees.

We went to another church that contained relics from the Crucifixtion; one of the nails, thorns, and wood from the cross. They were preserved in such a way that we really couldn't see them well. The most unique church we went to was the bone church. Underneath the church there was a long hallway that was decorated with the bones and skeletons of the church's monks. It was pretty creepy to see real human bones used for decoration.

Florence

Il Duomo/Santa Maria Cathedral
View from the top of Il Duomo
On Thanksgiving Day we woke up early and took a train to Florence. We took the slow train so it took us almost 4 hours. Once we arrived we walked to our hotel and got settled in. We first went to see the huge cathedral in Florence - Il Duomo/Santa Maria. The outside of this church is so ornate. The inside was beautiful as well. We decide to pay to go up in the dome. 463 steps later we were at the top!!! The views were amazing so it was worth it. Afterwards we went to the Gallery Academia. The best thing we saw there was Michaelangelo's David statue. We were not allowed to take any pictures though. I did however, snap a pic of a replica that sits in the piazza. We finished the afternoon with gelato and shopping. There are a lot of markets in Florence so we got some great deals. That night we had our Italian take on Thanksgiving dinner by going to a restaraunt called ZaZa's. We enjoyed some delicious pasta and actually ordered some meat and potatoes too.

The next day Beth, Sara and I headed to the Gallery Uffizi. We enjoyed all of the paintings, especially Michaelangelo's depiction of the Holy Family. We saw another church, which had a lot of construction going on so we were a little disappointed. We caught our train back to Rome that afternoon. I enjoyed Florence, but I was very excited to be back in Rome.

The Vatican & The Pope

Sculpture inside Vatican Museum
Altar inside St. Peter's

On Tuesday, we took the bus to the Vatican. We had reservations for the museum. We first made our way to the Sistine Chapel(no pictures allowed). It was a little overwhelming because the walls and ceiling are completely covered with paintings. It was hard to know where to look, but it was very beautiful. Then we walked through the Vatican Museum, which was my favorite museum. The building itself was so ornate. It had some really cool sculptures and paintings. Our favorite was Raphael's Transfiguration painting. I was sad to not be able to take a picture of it.
After exploring the museum we got to see St. Peter's Basilica. This was of course the largest and most ornate church we saw our entire time in Rome. I took picture after picture. There were a lot of sculptures inside mostly of Popes and Saints. The altar is spectacular with black columns that twist. We also got to go beneath the church to see the tombs of former Popes.
One of our goals for the day was to find out how to get tickets to the audience with the Pope on Wednesday. Luckily my sister-in-law Amber was brave enough to approach the Swiss Guards and ask. She scored us all tickets!! So Wednesday morning we returned to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope. It was very cool to be a room with people from ALL over the world. The entire celebration was said in seven different languages (Italian, French, Spanish, English, Russian, Portugese, German) Our view of the Pope wasn't that great, but he did bless us and our families.

Coloseum & Roman Forum

Well, after a loooong trip we finally made it safely to Rome on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I was exhausted and remember very little about Saturday night, with the exception of the wonderful pizza I ate :-)
On Sunday, Lindsey showed us around and we saw the Trevi Fountain which is huge and the most popular fountain in Rome. We each threw a coin in for luck and a wish that we would someday return to Rome. We also went to the Spanish Steps which had some really good views of the city.

On Monday morning we were well rested and ready for our first day of exploring Rome. We started with the Coloseum, which is simply amazing. The pictures don't do it justice. After we walked around inside and took lots of pictures we headed to the Roman Forum where we walked around the ruins. We didn't pay for any of the guided tours instead my Aunt Beth consulted Rick Steves(or his guide book that is). Rick Steves was our main source of info for the week :-). The ruins were pretty impressive also. After such a long day of walking we of course needed to treat ourselves to some gelato, which is the best ice cream in the world if you ask me.

Monday afternoon we found a church that we referred to as St. Peter's in Chains because it actually has the chains St. Peter wore when he was held prisoner. This church also had a very cool statue of Moses holding the tablet with the ten commandments on it.