Rome Day 2

Hey everyone! We started our day today around 10am by heading over to the Vatican. Grant’s brother had suggested we get reserved tickets so that we could bypass the line, and when we got there that was such a nice thing to have. There was a really, really long line for tickets into the Vatican but having reserved tickets, we got to bypass the 1-2 hour wait in line. When we got there, we were bombarded by the people selling tours, which got really annoying, because we already had tickets. Every few minutes someone would come up to us asking and of course we kept saying no. We got into the Vatican and we followed the order of rooms of the listening guide Grant, Sam and Austin bought. I didn’t care to listen to the guide and afterwards they said it probably wasn’t worth the 7 Euro price. The Vatican museum had a lot of statues to view and a bunch of artwork. I tried taking pictures of the nicer things, but you could seriously take thousands of pictures in there. A lot of the statues are only partial fragments from being destroyed throughout the years. I think my favorite part, and most everyone’s favorite part of the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel, just because of the notoriety and that of Michelangelo. It was really impressive how intricate the paintings were and I recognized a few of the paintings on the ceiling. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but most everyone snuck a few pictures; I got a few pictures myself although they aren’t that great. After leaving the museum, we walked out and saw St. Peters Basilica and the big court yard in front of the Vatican. We didn’t get to view the inside because the line was so long and we didn’t want to wait, but I think we may try to go back tomorrow.

After ate lunch in the cafeteria at the Vatican we headed back to the Yellow, to rest. Some of the guys were tired so we relaxed till about 6pm. I took a 2 hour napped and listened to my iPod for awhile. At 6pm, we headed out to Circus Maximus which used to be a huge track-like stadium where they held ancient competitions. I was a little bummed when we got there though, because you could only tell the shape from what used to be the stadium. The area was overcome with grass and you could just make out the gravel track, which used to be nicer I’m sure. I heard somewhere this place used to hold up to 120,000 which seems really impressive for the time. After that we viewed the Roman Forum, which is basically just a bunch of Romans. I think it was a real big area back during the height of Rome. But after that we just walked around for awhile. We ate dinner down a side street of the Trinity Fountain. After that, we met up with Trey and Amy from their two week trip over here. We were supposed to meet them at 9:30 on the Spanish steps but we ended up running into them about 9:10 on the way there. We hung out on the steps till about 10:30 when they had to go back to their hotel somewhere on the outside of town. It was really good seeing Trey and Amy and catching up with them. Sam and I ended up taking a taxi back to the Hostel because the metro was closed, and that’s been my day. I think we’ve hit most of the sites in Rome and I think tomorrow will be pretty relaxed. We have a 6:40 flight I think Wednesday morning to Athens so hopefully we make that. Update everyone again tomorrow.

Jonathan