My internship at the U.S. Mission to the EU was over and my Italian ‘vacation’ had started. (As if this entire trip hasn’t felt like a vacation.) It took me about 2 ½ hours to get from the airport to my hostel. As soon as I finally found it, the receptionist opened the door for me and asked if I have a hungry friend waiting there for me. I had to laugh because, yup, Michael was there, waiting for me so we could go out and grab dinner together. I was so happy that he was at the hostel as he [View Full Entry]

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Rome The ship was to dock in Civitavecchia Italy’s largest passenger port where about 5 cruisers were side by side. This port is known as the gateway to Rome. We had booked our trip into Rome, a 1½ journey by coach. The sun was shining and it was a pleasant 16º, although rain was forecast. Again we were very excited about our first trip to Rome, although we wondered if we would actually be able to get close enough to see anything as it was Good Friday. Where we were heading was the final destination of the route taken by the [View Full Entry]

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14 Stations of the Cross On Friday night @ 9 pm Laura, Jordan, and I walked down to the Colosseo to see the Pope do the 14 Stations of the Cross from the Ancient Temple of Rome and Venus. There were supposedly 20,000 people there and from the looks of it I believe it. We fought our way through the crowd to a spot where we could at least make out the Pope's face and settled in for a ceremony that seemed extremely long but was probably due to the fact that it was in Italian and only understood every other [View Full Entry]

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Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1787 The Vatican City is the world's smallest state by both population (less than 1,000) and area. It is one of only three sovereign city-state worldwide and located within the city of Rome. For the best approach to the Vatican walk across the beautiful Ponte Sant'Angelo to Castel Sant' Angelo, then turn left into Via della Concillazione which takes you straight to St. P [View Full Entry]

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I’m not a religious man, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect religion. And it certainly doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the sometimes magnificent architecture that comes with places of worship. To be truthful, I have often stated that “if you’ve seen one cathedral you’ve seen them all”. This is obviously not true, they are all unique in various ways, but many churches and cathedrals resemble each other. A lot. Same shape, same exterior, same interior, same purpose. A lot of the things that can be found in most churches can be found in [View Full Entry]

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Although we had an incredibly long day the day before, the girls and I were up bright and early. Learning from our mistakes, we did not stop by breakfast this morning. Instead, we headed to the little cafe we had seen that had everything a girl could want. My breakfast consisted of a chocolate croissant and a double shot of espresso. Amazing. I was finished before we even got out the door. It was an absolutely gorgeous day! For the second day in a row, we headed to the Colisseum but this time, to go in. We walked the same way [View Full Entry]

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We spent a day at the Vatican, where we got a tour of the museum, saw the basilica, and the Sistine Chapel filled with Michaelangelo's paintings. [View Full Entry]

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Passport Canada e-mailed me and said that my passport was ready to pick up. So we caught the train from Florence into the train station in Rome (Termini). We decided to try a different hostel and were recommended the Yellow Hostel which was a lot cheaper than the Pop Inn we stayed in last time. The night we got in we toured around the ancient part of Rome armed with our camera this time. The Coliseum was tricky to get good photos of at night. There were a few genious venders there selling tripods. But (partly due to our cheapness again) [View Full Entry]

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Next on the agenda was Vatican City. The tour we did through the Colosseum and the Forum also did tours of the Vatican and as we enjoyed that sooo much we thought we'd jump on board. Especially as they told us we'd jump the queue, we'll we were to find out that that depended on what you mean by jump. We arrived at the meeting point and went to sign in and pay at the office. Then a guy took us to meet our guide. We waited across from the queuing masses and he seemed a bit lost, constantly looking for [View Full Entry]

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To text [View Full Entry]

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