Rome

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Yesterday we headed to Rome for a day trip. We visited the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, St Peters Cathedral (and dome) and then took a brief break for...you guessed it...gelato!

We then walked to Capitol Hill, the Forum and the Coliseum. After a long day of touring, we ate dinner at a delicious resturant near the Piazza dei Fiori. This is when things took an interesting turn. We left dinner with what we thought was plenty of time to make it to the train station for our 9:45 train. Unfortunately, the taxi's were on strike, so we couldnt take a taxi. Plan B was to take a bus, but you can't take a bus without a pre-paid ticket (which we didnt anticipate needing and all of the ticket outlets were closed). We literally ended up running uphill through Rome (it felt like a video game, running in and out of crowds, avoiding the mopeds and cars). All of our running was futile, we ended up missing our train and had to do a mad sprint to another train station to catch the last train to Florence that evening. Long story short, we made it back to Florence after a 2 hour stop over in Bologna at 6:30 a.m (if we had made our train, we'd have been back before midnight!)

Today, we took a hour long nap before taking a walking tour of Florence, where we learned about the history and lore of Florence. We also visited the Duomo, but the highlight of the day was the 4 hour nap I just woke up from! Now, its off to watch the Italy v. Germany game outdoors on a hugh screen! On my way I'll pick up an Italy shirt and join the crowds of Italy supporters.

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