One bag, two bag, three bag, four!

Greetings from lovely Roma! We absolutely love this city...so much to do and see. We arrived safely from Sorrento, if nearly 2 hours late thanks to a delayed train from Naples. We found our hostel which was thankfully close to the train station. We walked in the front door and the night reception guy (I don't know, what else would you call him?) burst into the Canadian national anthem. In French. Seriously. He was incredibly chatty at 12:30 at night when a very tired Erin and Megs were not. We FINALLY got checked in (but not before hearing about this guy's life...he lived in Montreal but is Swedish and incidently, just lost his passport, is now doing a PHd, lives with his boyfriend in a better neighbourhood the he used to because he got robbed twice, and so on and so forth) and hit the sack. Day 1 in Rome was mostly just a lot of walking and seeing a lot of the sights. We saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the Vatican/St. Peter's Basillica from the outside. We got back to the hostel that night to find out that they put on a free pasta dinner each night. This was excellent news as we were thinking that eating out all the time in Rome was going to be very expensive. We met some cool people that were also staying at the hostel and called it a night pretty early.

We got up and got rolling pretty early on day 2 as there were things to do and places to see! We went straight down to the Colluseum in hopes of beating the line up. We were sort of successful and only ended up waiting about 20 minutes to get in. I must admit, the Colluseum is probably one of my favourite sights in Rome. It's amazing to think how it was built and all the amazing things that went on in there. We rented the audio tour thingys so got a great overview of all the different sections. While in the area, we also walked around the Roman Forum and the Palantine Hill. When Erin was in Rome in May, she went in search of the Catacombs but didn't find them so we thought we would try out luck. Well, not so much. We wandered down in the general direction from the Colluseum and found ourselves walking 'off the map.' Not good when you have no idea where you are! We gave up on this idea, and walked back into the map. We went out for a couple of beers that night with 2 Brits from the hostel. The place we went to uses tokens to pay for drinks. What is that all about?! Oh well, good times.

We had a tour of the Vatican booked for day 3 so off we went in the morning. We first went into the Vatican Museums and saw some sculptures and some different hallways with tapestries. Very cool but because it was so packed, we didn't get to spend much time looking at the exhibits. The next stop was the Sistine Chapel. I can't even put into words the enormity of this place and how absolutely stunning it is. Evidently, Michaelangelo didn't even want to paint it, he was pretty much forced into it. He spent nearly 10 years on the 'Last Judgement' which is the alter piece and the ceiling, which depicts 3 different stories, including the creation of Adam and Eve. We had about 15 minutes in the Chapel and honestly, 15 hours wouldn't even be enough to see everything. From there, we were led into St. Peter's Basillica, which is the largest church in the world (and ironically, the Vatican is the smallest country in the world). The Basillica is weird because you know it's big and it looks big, but it's very deceiving. The tour guide pointed out some lettering close to the top of the church, and yes, it looks large, but she said the letters alone were 10 feet tall! Unbelievable! The amounts of wealth in the Vatican are astounding...the Basillica is plated in gold and it has the largest art collection in the world. Last night was 'Notte Bianca' which translates to the White Night. All the shops and museums and restaurants were open late and all the piazzas in the city had entertainment. We walked around for a couple of hours taking in all the sights. Very cool to be in the middle of something so huge and popular.

Whew! This now brings me to today. We said goodbye to our British friends this morning and moved hostels for out last night in Rome. We are now very close to the Vatican City so we'll be off tonight to try to get some night shots of the Basillica and the Square. A month of walking miles everyday has caught up with us and our feet are not so much as loving us at the moment, so we ended up taking a bus tour for part of the afternoon. The commentary was disappointing, but we learned a few things we hadn't heard before. The guys selling the knockoff purses, wallets, belts etc were out in full force so we perused past a couple of vendors.....'special price, just for you pretty lady...it's real Prada!. Yea sure, special price just for us...and 15 Euro for a real Prada purse? I think not!

It's off early tomorrow morning for Pisa (and yes, we will be taking the obligatory tourist shots of holding the tower up!) and then on to Milan tomorrow evening. I can't even believe we'll be heading off to Dublin on Tuesday night, the past month has flown by!!! Oh well, we'll make the best of our remaining 2 days in awesome Italia!

Ciao ciao!