Just Rome-in Around

Once again, I woke up early to go to mass. Yes, I wanted to go to the Vatican very badly, but I needed a ticket that I would have had to have gotten days in advance, and I also had no idea how to get there and didn't feel ready to wander far through Rome on my own. So, I googled what was supposed to be a beautiful church (recommended on the Vatican website) that was only five minutes from my hostel. I checked the times, memorized the directions, and set out early to make mass. However, when I arrived, I found that the church was shut. I tried every door, and there was no way of getting in. Thinking that it might open a little later, I wandered down the street to pass the time before trying again. I found an interesting little park that apparently had a "magic gate". It was supposedly meant to purify one's soul by walking between "monstrous dwarves". It also summons cats because I counted seventeen cats in my five minute visit and, I won't lie, it absolutely scared me to death. They were everywhere. I knew Italy had plenty of strays, but it's still a little freaky to have cats on top of ruins just hissing at you at 8:30 in the morning.

The castle of cats

Do you see the cat in the statue?

"Monstrous dwarves" 

I checked back but the church never opened. I did, however, get to see a pretty great arch that was right next to the church called, L'arco di Gallieno. According to the description next to it, it used to connect the Roman Forum to a place called "ad Spem Veterem", but it had crumbled over time. That's one of my favorite things about Europe: they don't tear down history, they build around it to preserve it. 

After this little adventure, I headed back to my hostel, and didn't get lost (go me!). When I came back, I sat outside our room for a little to read the readings I missed and reflected upon them before enjoying breakfast with the girls. It was going to be a big day, hitting many of the main sights in Rome. In order to get to them, we decided to take the subway, which I had no idea that Rome had. It reminded me a lot of New York with Grandpa Art and Grandma Mary, especially because there must have been a comic-con with all the teenagers in costume.

Our first sight was the Colosseum. Man, was the line long. We're talking three hour wait long. Lucky for us, a man approached us and offered a nice deal: a guided tour/fast pass of both the Colosseum and The Old Forum. We took him up on it and were inside within fifteen minutes. Our guide talked about a lot of stuff that I learned from my last visit, but I realized I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned. We were able to have a free our to walk around, which we took great advantage of, before meeting up with a different tour guide for the forum.

One of my favorite shots

This place amazes me

Tons of people died here, let's take a picture!

We met our new tour guide, a tall ginger from California with a great sense of humor, who would be leading us around the forum. I was on familiar streets for a while, until we went inside the forum. It was really cool to walk through and see where there had been sports games and where things had been sold and where people worshiped. 

Sports area

Some buildings were intact. Others...not so much

In one of the churches 

Our guide made plenty of jokes about what he showed us, and was honest about great places to eat and tourist traps. He was incredibly helpful as well as informational, and because of this, we decided to book another tour with this group for the Vatican and Sistine Chapel. It's amazing what a good tour guide can do! Next, we followed his advice for where to eat, and tried to wander as far from the central city as possible. We found a cool little place (even had Elvis hanging in the corner) where I finally ordered caprese, which I had been wanting the entire trip.

I stayed healthy

Afterwards, we decided we wanted to visit the Pantheon. On our way, we passed by the Vittorio Monument, dodging cars as we went.

The Pantheon, though crowded, was an extremely cool place to be. The only light coming in was from the giant hole in the ceiling, and the place was impressively well lit for this. It had a beautiful altar, but I don't think many were respecting it.

We were extremely tired from all that we had gotten done, and we all really wanted to get back to the room to rest our feet. However, I wasn't about to let the girls go without seeing the Trevi Fountain. It's currently being cleaned, so there's glass all around it, but it was so close, and they hadn't tossed a coin in before, so we pushed towards it. I didn't toss in a coin, but I taped the girls doing it, and I think they were happy we ended up going. 

This is as close as we got

Being back in the room was incredibly relaxing. We all sat around and talked about what we liked, and I let the girls flip through the photos on my camera. After a shower, I was ready for a good sleep to prepare for the Vatican the next day.