Exploring the Ruins

We were told by Tim (our tour guide from the day before) that if we stood in the line at the entrance of the Roman Forum, we could get into the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum without waiting in all the other lines! This worked out great (and turned out to be the only line we waited in on the whole trip)! Lucky us!




So we entered into Palatine Hill first, the palace where the emperor of Rome lived during the Flavian dynasty. Mostly in ruins now, but one could imagine walking through the peaceful gardens, pondering life as an emperor on the top of one of Rome's great hills. The view was absolutely amazing!




Then we headed over to the Roman Forum to dig a bit deeper into the history at we had learned from Tim the day before. We were able to walk right through the ruins of the once busy streets of powerful Rome!




We ended our exploration at the Colosseum. Although we had visited the outside the day before, we still wanted to experience what it would be like to be inside; people cheering from the ledges, animals being raised by elevators and appearing onto the main floor through trap doors. It was quite interesting imaging how it would have been to be part of a spectacle like this oh so many years ago!








We finished up our day with a night walking tour of the city. With Tim as our guide once again, we were this time a large group of four! We walked the whole city, discovering some of Rome's most famous artworks by night. We visited beautiful flowing fountains, intricately carved sculptures, climbed the famous Spanish steps, and finished our tour looking out over the entire city from a gorgeous park right at the old entrance of Rome. Incredibly beautiful!








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Location:Via Vicenza, Rome, Italy

The Vatican City

We woke up to kind of a rainy morning, but luckily we were headed to Vatican City to check out the museums and basilica, which all happen to be inside activities! We couldn't have planned our days more perfectly, according to how the weather has been! Good thing we didn't listen to the weather man!
We had a tour planned for the Vatican museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica at 1:30pm, so we grabbed some sandwiches from a local grocer and headed down towards the Vatican to enjoy a little picnic before our tour started. We were a group of 20 people, but luckily our guide gave us all headsets and she just spoke into a microphone so we could all hear her perfectly (a bit better than shouting facts while walking through the museum, chapel, and church, I thought)! haha! She was a great tour guide, lots of spunk and very Italian, so she kept us on our toes and made sure we got all of the important facts.




Our first stop off was the Vatican museum, where we saw all kinds of Roman sculptures, paintings, tapestries, and mosaics that were all beautifully preserved.








Next, we headed over to the Sistine Chapel where we got to view the infamous painted ceiling and alter wall of Michael Angelo! Breathtaking! We couldn't believe we were actually there seeing these amazing works of art!




Lastly, we headed to my favorite, St. Peter's Basilica. It was hard to comprehend just how large the church was but still with all of its many intricate details throughout! The bronze crested altar, the marble floors, the painted domed ceilings, and just the sure magnitude if its greatness and all that it stands for, captured me completely!




As we left St. Peter's, we were lucky enough to catch the changing of guard at the city gates and even got a glimpse of their fancy outfits (rumored to be designed by Michaelangelo himself)! It stopped raining just as we left Vatican City and entered back into Italy (still crazy the think that it is its own little nation)! As we walked away, we turned back around to get one last look, and we were left with this gorgeous view! A perfect way to cap off this unforgettable Roman experience!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Via Vicenza, Rome, Italy