Greetings from the Vatican It has been a day filled to the brim with history and art. This morning the three of us caught the metro over to Vatican city. It is still very hot, in case you were wondering about that aspect of things... We hopped on to the rather long line into the Vatican museums which moved pretty quickly. It turns out that it was just the line to get into the area where you get tickets, but all in all the whole thing only took about 30 minutes. Instead of telling you about the wonderful 30 minutes [View Full Entry]

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The Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Pantheon Italy is hot. Very hot. It is also humid, muggy and warm. Thankfully there are public fountains with clean, semi-drinkable water that I used to re-fill my water bottle as the day wore on. It is also too hot to eat anything besides fruit and gelato (in my case grapes and chocolate) which we had for lunch. Can't really complain though. This morning we enjoyed a hotel breakfast that was pretty decent, then headed off to the Termini (train station) to reserve seats on our train trips. It turns out that reservations are [View Full Entry]

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Sorry to anyone who's been waiting by the seat of their pants for my blog posts but wait no more I have 3 days worth of Roman adventures! I'm going to post an individual blog for each day so it's not one huge post. I would have done the posts by day in Rome but it cost 27 euro a day to use the internet at the hotel I was staying at so I opted to wait until I returned to Vicenza where I have free internet! Well day one began with a lovel 4 1/2 hour train ride. A good [View Full Entry]

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So Im sitting in a bar right now in a little suburb outside of Rome at the Hostel we are staying at. This place is freakin awesome!!! We left Montepulciano this morning to go to Rome, which took about 3 hours. We got there and I knew I was going to love it. Its a huge city, but its different than Florence and I cant get enough of it. We immediately went to Vatican City and got in line to see the Vatican. I was kindof disappointed that I wasnt going to get another stamp on my passport though, since Vatican [View Full Entry]

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After a nice peaceful rest I am ready for day two of roaming Rome! :) The shuttle dropped us off at Piazza Barberini and from there I hopped onto the subway for my first site, the Colosseum! As I emerge from the steamy, hot tunnels of the subway I am stopped in my tracks by the Colosseum which is suddenly towering in front of me. Dazed, I quickly run across the street and see a precious, scrawny trojan and must have my picture taken with him. Afterwards, I find out he charges 5 euros to take a picture but he says [View Full Entry]

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Neither words nor pictures can describe the beauty, detail, and overall emotion of what I felt and saw during my visit to the Vatican City. If you ever get the chance to come to Italy you must go to the Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's Basilica)...it should be a goal in life. Sorry didn't mean to get deep and introspective. Anyways, I spent most of my third day at the Vatican City. I started off with the Vatican Museums (unknowingly saving the best for last). This place is just a maze of rooms and galleries filled with hundreds and hundreds [View Full Entry]

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Arrival in Rome Wow. We've been on the road for more than 24 hours now. Combine that with time zone changes and its a little bit daunting. The flight to England was not great- I ended up directly behind a young child who screamed for literally the entire time. That wasn't too condusive to resting up. Then we had to transfer airports in England. Emily's uncle "Hedgie" gave us a lift. He's really interesting and entertaining- we'll be seeing him again in England. As our luck would have it we got a flat tire and needed to replace it on [View Full Entry]

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Today we arrived in Rome, and it is pretty much one of the most incredible cities I've ever seen. It's so awesome to see the actual ruins that existed over 2000 years ago! Venice was cool, but this is beyond cool. What's awesome about Rome is that it is much more of a living city than Venice was. As great as the sights in Venice were, it was very much a tourist trap and didn't really feel real. This does. People are in their business suits, stuff isn't outrageously priced, people are friendly. And it is not too hot, which is [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 19th June We arrived in Rome about 2pm after taking a morning train from Venice. At this point we proceeded to get lost on the way to the hotel, eventually reaching it. It was a nice room and it felt a little disappointing to only stay here for one night. As we only had one day we went out exploring, hading first to the Colosseum. On the way we made a number of discoveries: 1. It was extremely hot (in the mid 30’s) 2. Rome has possibly the oldest and scungiest Metro trains and trams that we had seen. 3. [View Full Entry]

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Roho: Sorry Nana, but fucking Rome. Perhaps we ought to start with Venice first. Rich: We arrived in Venice in 35° heat and were astonished when we got to our room. It was cute and small and absolutely stifling inside. But not to worry, I'm sure the tiny little fan heater they provide you will cool things down nicely. If only that were true...had trouble sleeping due to the heat throughout the night and the live band that was performing less than 40 metres from our 'room'. Roho: Don't forget the mozzies... Rich: Well they didn't really touch me. I swear [View Full Entry]

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