Rome - Vatican City

Ok, yeah...so getting up at 5am while you're on vacation sucks, but necessary for seeing Vatican City. St. Peter's Basilica opens at 7am and Amy was confident that we should try and beat the crowds. We walked all the way there through the empty Roman streets, and it was pretty awesome being there when St. Peter's Square was so empty (the place got seriously crowded later in the day). I didn't think that any of the trip could top the Colosseum, but St. Peter's probably does. Being a Catholic and walking into THE Catholic church of the world, and taking it all in is absolutely mesmerizing. The church is so huge and the entire thing is absolutely breathtaking from start to finish; including the church, view from the top of the dome, the underground burial tombs of the past popes (St. Peter's and Pope John Paul II's tombs are pretty amazing). We did a Rick Steves audio tour of the church which was awesome, and I got a picture of me with St. Peter's bronze statue, which has the right toe worn completely smooth by centuries of worshipers that have kissed it or lay hand on it. Amy kept trying to kiss me in St. Peter's Basilica, but I wouldn't let her since it didn't feel right being such a holy place. She almost tricked me into it a couple of times, but I caught myself. She was pretty humored by this, giving me a hard time.

My fianceè was on top of things again, having prebought our tickets for the Vatican Museum, allowing us to bypass the 2-4 hour line that had developed during the day (you're awesome, babe!). I really didn't care for the place though, since I'm not too thrilled by paintings. And the crowd just killed the overall experience, especially in the Sistine Chapel. The Swiss Guard in Vatican City are pretty cool, but the clown uniforms they wear are in need of an update (supposedly designed by Michaelangelo).

Awesome experience, exhausting day. Got some cool little gifts for people from Vatican City. In addition to Amy's below, pics above of the lengthy view of St. Peter's, me with the statue, us in front of the Pope's altar, the crowd in the Vatican Museum, and the Swiss Guard.

Rome - Night Walk

Ok, so Amy's encouraging me to continue blogging about stuff she may have already discussed, since it shows my perspective of the experience. So hopefully this is entertaining, and the repetitiveness isn't too horrendous.

Being that it starts at our home base of Campò de Fiori, we decided to do Rick Steves' Night Walk Across Rome, which hits the four most interesting night scenes in the city. This starts off at two very social night spots, one containing Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain. Amazing scene with the crowd, restaurants, entertainers, etc. and all around such rich history. We just don't have anything like it in the US. We met a couple from Concord, NC at the Four Rivers Fountain, which is about 15 miles from where Amy lives. Small world.

The Trevi Fountain... I would describe how romantic this place is if it wouldn't put what's left of my manliness at risk. It's tradition to turn your back to the fountain, make a wish, close your eyes and throw in money to bring you true love and ensure a return to Rome in your future. We both did so, but Amy said we couldn't tell each other our wishes. Naturally, I'm tempted to write my wish is here, but I'm guessing that wouldn't go over so well. After a few minutes of some PDA at the fountain (oh yeah, you know how we roll), we made our way to the Spanish Steps, which wasn't real impressive for me. I was just sure to say "Nah" when Amy asked if I wanted to climb them, since I was pretty much beat at this point.

I came to two realizations during this night walk: 1) my analness (is that a word?) extends to photography, since I've realized that it's impossible for a stranger to actually take a good picture. Seriously people, it's called Zoom In and Center appropriately to include the scene in the background. Not that difficult... 2) the peddlers of Rome are seriously annoying. They're everywhere! If it's raining, they're selling umbrellas. If you're in a romantic night spot, they're selling roses and polaroids. Otherwise, they're selling anything from toy bubble guns, to glowing zippers that fly in the air, even stuffed dogs that have flapping ears that play annoying music. I have to wonder if anyone ever buys this stuff, and also if these guys have a central hub, because they're all selling the same thing, and if it starts raining, they're all in place with umbrellas within a few minutes. "I see a rain cloud...over." "Grab the umbrellas and get in position! Go! Go!" Anyway, a peddler at the Spanish Steps helped us coin the phrase "No money, No honey!" as Amy talked about earlier. We've had some good laughs with that one.

Got a few pics here of the Four Rivers Fountain and Trevi Fountain, and now I gotta run. Amy's saving us a seat at a local English Pub to watch the championship of some sport where they don't use their hands and kick a ball around. I know...sounds crazy, huh?

We love love love Italy!!!

I am on the computer at our hotel in Sorrento typing away (just looked up some celebrity gossip sites-I know, I am a dork!) and now starting to blog while my fiance is doing our laundry at a laundromat block away. We joked that this is a sign of things to come when were are married! Ahhhhh, the life!!!!

Whereas, the last 3 days-time spent in Sorrento have been breezy and relaxing, our last 2 days in Rome were exhilirating. This past Monday, we spent the entire day in Vatican City. We woke up super early to get to St. Peters Basilica when it opened-7am. We were the 3rd and 4th people in line. We walked in the cathedral and it was wonderfully quiet and empty and peaceful. The church is so huge yet so elegant and majestic. My favorite part of the church is Michaelangelos Pieta sculpture, now protected in bulletproof glass, one of the most beautiful scultpures I have ever seen. After seeing the church we climbed the stairs to the dome of the church for beautiful views of the city. Next, we went to the Vatican Museum. Thanks God we had tickets and were able to bypass the 4 block long line. There, we spent most of our time checking out the beautiful room of art by Raphael-the most famous work of his in there is the famed School of Athens-and then went into the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel was soooo gorgeous and surprisingly very small. It is full of LOUD tourists unfortunately trying to take pictures of the chapel with workers contstantly yelling at them. Nontheless, it was a great experience. We listened to our Rick Steves audio guide and learned that Michaelangelo had NOONE helping him do the painting. He did it all by himself, whereas Raphael had many people helping him paint his room in the Vatican Museum. After the museum, we went on the Vatican Scavi tour, which is the underground tour of the Vatican excavations. It was pretty cool. We learned that there are 2 layers underneath the current Vatican-one being the previous church that was there and then there was a neocropolis under that layer, which was an old burial ground. We were shown some of this burial grounds-mausoleums and also some artifacts surrounding the story of St. Peter being buried under St. Peters Basilica.

Our last day in Rome was special in that it was the only day in Rome that we took at a slow pace. We went to some lesser known churches, did some city walks recommended in our travel books and went to one of my favorite spots in town-the Galleria Borghese. This is one of my favorite art museums ever! I went there last time I was in Rome and knew that despite Chris not liking art too much that he would love it-and he did. It's a small museum of 2 stories and houses art collected from a ruthless cardinal hundreds of years ago-Cardinal Borghese. He acquired this art using limitless funds he received from the Vatican-I believe the audioguide said his uncle was the pope at the time. If money couldn't buy the painting he wanted, then we would threaten the art owner until they agreed to give it up.

The next day-Tuesday-we got into Sorrento. We rode a sketchy train called the Circumvesuvia from Naples (after taking the standard regional train from Rome to Naples.) to Sorrento. I told Chris this was the time to really watch his valuables. We spent our day here strollling on the city streets-it is a really small town and looks a lot like Charleston, SC. We checked into our hotel-the Ulisse Deluxe Hostel. It is soooo beautiful, cheap (70E night), and has huge clean rooms . . . and we get our own bathrooms. Woooohoo!!!!

Wednesday was my favorite day of the trip so far. We took a taxi tour of the Amalfi Coast, a bit of a splurge but soooo beautiful and memoriable. It was just Chris and I and a taxi driver named Lorenzo. He was fabulous and totally made the trip for us. He was histerical, knowledgeable, spoke English and he said he would get drunk and force himself to watch movies like Under the Tuscan Sun so he could explain to his American patrons where in Amalfi Coast the scenes were filmed at. The views on the drive were breathtaking. We stopped at Positano-Chris and I want to buy a house here someday to retire (if we get rich!) A lot of movies have been filmed here-its a picturesque town crammed on a seaside. We had an our to spend here and then rode to Amalfi and spent an hour there as well. Finally, we stopped for a few hours to have lunch at Ravello. This town is beautiful-not on the water but high up in the hills and overlooking the sea. Aboslutely beautiful. The lunch we had was scrumptuous. I ate at this same restaurant last time in Italy and it was one of the best meals I had ever had. The food was fresh from the owners farm. The vegetable tray was my favorite. After lunch we went to Villa Ruffalo to see amazing views of the sea from the town. After this, we we rode back to Sorrento.

Yesterday-Friday-we took a boat to the island of Capri, a 20 min ride from Sorrento. The island is gorgeous and VERY VERY touristy. Rich people like to hob nob on this island. We took a chair lift up to see the sweeping views of the sea, sort of a 360 view of the island. So beautiful. Then, we hiked down the mountain. It was one of the most peaceful parts of our trip.

Today, we slept in (lovely) and went to Pompei, a 30 min train ride from Sorrento. I was soooo excited for Chris to see this town, since 1) I am very passionate about archaeology and studied this town when I was a small child (dork) and 2) One of my goals this trip was to get him more interested in history. We did a 40min Rick Steves audioguide (we love this guy) of the site and it was great. We saw the famous houses that were excavated, an amphitheater, a bakery, a brothel (there were naked pictures at the entry of every woman's room-each room's stone "bed"was preserved, the forum, even plastered bodies in the exact same pose since 79A.D . It is amazing how preserved the city is for being close to 2,000 yrs old. There were several dogs roaming the site along with the tourists. I saw a sign trying to get people to adopt these dogs. I told Chris I wanted to take one him with us-they were soooo cute, but looked kind of sick, like they needed a good vet.

Tonight, we are watching the Champions League final, well what I really mean is that I am making Chris watch this. It is the European equivalent of the Superbowl for Europe's favorite sport-soccer. I loooove European soccer and want to get Chris into it-what better than this exciting match. Sorrento is a big vacation spot for the British. There are several English pubs here. We are going to hit one of them, eat some fish and chips and watch the game. And, I am going to drink Bellini's, one of my new favorite drinks-Prosecco (dry Italian Champagne) with a little grenadine, and peach juice-YUM.

Rome - The Colosseum & Roman Forum

Undoubtedly what will be the highlight of my experience here, we went to visit the Colosseum and Roman Forum today. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but just wanted to say that this was an awesome, eye-opening, awe-inspiring, and exhausting experience. My thanks to my awesome fianceé for pre-buying our tickets so we got to completely bypass the ricidulous lines of tourists...suckers. Love you babe! I was pretty sad when we took our final steps out of the Colosseum, thinking I may never get to see this incredible place again.

We met a small group from Athens, Greece in the Colosseum with whom Amy buddied up with for a bit. Greece is her favorite place and she strongly claims that either we will get married on the Greek Isles or we will honeymoon there. I'm fairly certain I should get a say in that, but she seems to disagree...

The amount of walking during this part of the trip definitely tested the endurance capabilities of the legs supporting this 6'4" body. Amy zoomed around just fine, even when we back tracked across the Roman Forum a couple of times, forgetting to see something here or there. I've got a feeling that Advil stock is increasing as we make our way through this trip.

Rome - The Pantheon

So I thought it'd be cool to document our walks throughout Rome by taking a picture of the streets we walk along to get to the major sights. Amy thought that this wouldn't be so cool, and has proceeded to not let me forget it. However, much to her aggrevation, I've been doing it anyway. But don't worry, I'm not going to bore everyone with all of those, just thought that'd be humorous to share.

So after settling in today, we headed out to see the Pantheon. Along the way, we stopped in this little church that held a Michaelangelo sculpture and Amy made sure that I was aware that I don't use a flash when taking pictures. Lucky for me, the new camera I bought has some awesome lighting assist, so my pictures are turning out great. However, Amy couldn't figure out how to turn the flash on her camera off and she snapped a nice big bright flash right in front of the priest. Luckily, he didn't seem to mind.

So we made it to the Pantheon to find that some restoration work was taking place on some of the outside columns, but that didn't take away from the experience. The engineer in me was pretty dazzled by the architecture of this place. No history lesson here, google it if you want. Got a couple of pics, including me cheesing in front of the Oculus (huge hole in the roof), that is completely open. Given that it was raining, rain basically just pours down into the center of the Pantheon and drains out through ancient holes in the floor. Pretty cool stuff.

Rome - Arrival

Ok, so those of you who know Amy and I well will know that I'm a bit more detail oriented, and thus my blogging could go on forever. So I'll do my best to keep things to numerous short blogs and include some pictures along the way.

So the flight over was pretty rough. Approximately 9 hours of feeling like I was squatting in a clown car. Airplanes suck for tall people. Naturally, Amy slept for about 7 hours of the flight. I wasn't so lucky, just slept a little off and on. Upon arriving in Rome, we jumped in a cab, which I've come to learn is like having a death wish with the traffic and driving habits over here. Basically, there are no rules and everyone is out for themselves, pedestrians and vehicles alike.

We got dropped off at Campò de Fiori, a little night spot about 1 block from the little apartment we've rented during our Roman stay. Turns out the little neighborhood we're staying in is somewhat famous, being on postcards, etc. The little place is nice, but the bathroom is something to get used to, as Amy already mentioned. Snapped a pic of the little postcard nook our apartment is in.

Karaoke!!!!

So, Chris & I went out to a lovely dinner tonight at a seafood restaurant on the sea. We had great wine and great food-seafood. It was a nice 2 hr dinner. Afterwards, we went to a few English pubs and then hit a KARAOKE bar. I talked 2 Italian girls into singing karaoke with me and we sang 2 songs together, one of them being the song with the lyrics "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore." I love that song. It was a blast. Poor Chris had to deal with me because I had a little too much to drink tonight! Bummer that he couldn't hear me sing because the karoake guy loved to hear his voice so much that he sang along to every song and jacked his volume up and ours down that the only voice anyone in the crowd could hear was his-funny!

Addition by Chris: added the photo above. Despite using red-eye reduction mode, still got some glowing little eyes. Or maybe the Italian legends of vampires are true???