Italia - where i'm from? (Part I - Roma)

The planning began all the way back in January-- flights and train tickets purchased, hotels booked-- all for Becca and me to travel to Italy during the week before Easter. You'd think it would have been a smooth entrance into Rome, but of course Becca's flight after her layover in Portugal was cancelled (who knew that the Portuguese Pilots go on strike every Easter?), so my first 24 hours in Italy were spent by myself.

After spending Sunday morning getting the lay of the land, I finally met up with Becca and we headed out to the Spanish Steps (described in Let's Go as "designed by an Italian, paid for by the French, named for the Spaniards, occupied by the British, and currently featuring American greats like Ronald McDonald, the Spanish Steps exude worldliness"). Becca's pictures are better, but here is an idea ---------->

We then proceeded on to Villa Borghese, and umm, went into the Galleria Borghese (we didn't actually, but I'm forbidden from telling Laura Parry that... it wasn't our fault that they had sold out their tickets for the day!). We got a little lost in the park (this is where we learned that none of the signs in Italy actually point in the direction that you want to go), but finally found the Terrace on Pincio, which has a great view of Piazza del Popolo (picture on the left)


To finish off the shortened day of sightseeing, we headed over to the Fountain of Trevi. We tossed in a coin over our shoulder, as is tradition... however, we didn't read the tradition close enough to see that if you tossed in 2 coins, you would fall in love in Rome. So the good news is that apparently I will have a speedy return to Rome, but the bad news is that I won't be falling in love there.

Fast forward 8 hours... it's about 3:30am and I wake up to a rattling sound and I am CONVINCED that someone is trying to break into our hotel room. I wake Becca (it's like waking the dead) to tell her and she claims it's the wind. I get up, make sure the door is locked and go back to sleep. In the morning, Becca off-handedly suggests that maybe it was an earthquake because she thinks she remembers the ground moving-- aaaand she was right. And I thought it was an intruder.

After that revelation at 8am, we got ourselves out the door and over to the Vatican to attempt to beat the lines. We started out with the Vatican Museum. We saw the famous Raphael frescoes - The School of Athens and The Deliverance of St Peter (both below) and OF COURSE, Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel (yeah, you're not supposed to take pictures in there, but we did it anyway- left)




Before heading out to Piazza San Pietro, we sent off a few postcards to the fam through the Vatican Post Office (to which I received a lackluster thanks for-- the Vatican has their very own postal system for goodness sake!!). Though the line to enter St. Peter's Basilica wrapped around 2/3rds of the square, it did not take long to enter the Basilica itself. The only reason the line is so long is due to the security-- the St Peters is the largest Christian Church in the world, and can hold 60,000 people. It took 120 years to build the Basilica as it is today - it was completed in 1626. Sadly, we ran out of time to go up into the dome (this became a theme in our trip-- both running out of time and not getting to up into the domes).

Another highlight of the inside of St Peters is Michaelangelo's Pieta-- and while I did find it moving, in my mind it's closely rivaled by his other Pieta, located in the Duomo Museum (actually, Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore) in Florence. You may need to see it in person, but here are my pictures:



Now off to Venice...