Day 2 - Rome

We both woke up around 4.30 or 5.00, and were completely wide awake. Probably had something to do with falling asleep at 18.00 in the evening. The hotel had a delicious continental breakfast (no extra charge), that had some some really random choices including cut up hot dogs (do they think that is American Sausage?) and cold cuts. Then we headed out on a bus towards Vatican City. The weather was cold and cloudy, and occasionally a few little sprinkles of rain would fall, but for the most part we avoided any rain, so we couldn't complain.

We arrived somewhere other than where Rick Steve's directions started from, so we were somewhat lost for a while (and couldn't quite locate ourselves on the map), but eventually realized we were on the other side of Vatican City from the museum entrance. We walked around the entranced and headed into the Vatican Museum, where we spent most of the late morning (two or three hours). Near the entrance, we sat down on some benches, where there was this tiny black cat that jumped up next to us and started running around behind us on the bench rubbing against us and getting petted. He was pretty cute, though I'm surprised a black cat is allowed in the Vatican. I would've thought some priest would've declared him a spy of Satan and had him thrown out by now (or worse). Then we headed towards the Egyptian Museum (the start of the whole Vatican Museum). I don't know what those museum guards did with themselves before texting was invented, but it sure seemed to keep them entertained most of the time. Right before the Sistine Chapel, we stopped and rested their little coffee shop for a while.

Then we headed into the Sistine Chapel. All the benches were taken (it was quite crowded) so we sat down on the steps and started taking pictures. I don't think we were supposed to be doing either of these, because we were told not to (though in all fairness, at any one time there were 20 to 40 camera snapping away, and a bunch of people sitting on the steps. The chapel was very pretty, and when we got a bench, Lauren read some of the history out loud from Rick Steve's guide book. When we were ready to go, we left via a back “guided tours only” door that Rick Steve recommended sneaking through to avoid a half hour long walk all the way around the Vatican Walls just to get back to St Peter's Basillica.

We went into St Peter's Basillica, which was absolutely amazing, probably more so than the Sistine Chapel (just because of the sheer size and architecture. It was kind of dark for pictures, but I got a lot of good ones thanks to my travel tripod. Many parts of it were closed off – it looked like they were setting up a lot of xmas event stuff.

We left the Basillica and headed towards a restaurant that Lauren found in the Rick Steves book. Unfortunately, Lauren mistook the street “Leon IX” on the map for “Leon IV” where the restaurant was located, and even more unfortunately they were located on opposite sides of Vatican city. So we embarked on yet another long trek around the city, and made to the restaurant. The food was quite good, and not terribly expensive. Then we headed for the metro and off to Termini Train station, which is a massive train station in the middle of Rome. After 20 or 30 minutes of wandering around it looking for the ticket office, we found it and bought our train tickets for Florence. They were only €19 each (for the slower train) from Rome to Florence, which was even cheaper than they were online. It's always nice to keep travel costs down.

They we took the metro back a couple stops to the Spanish Steps. They were pretty neat, and there was some sort of xmas event going on at the bottom of them. There seemed to be much opera involved, which was great, because it's not really Italy until you've heard opera in the streets. Then we walked over a few blocks to the Trevi fountain, where I took some more good pictures in the dark thanks to my tripod. We decided that we had better get some Gelato (sp?) while we were in Rome, despite the cold temperature, so we went to a little shop near by and got some. On the way back we decide to go by a market and get some dinner to take back to the hotel room. We found a super market, where we got some meat, bread, and cheese (and of course a coca lite for Lauren, as usual). I was searching for the wine, and was completely and utterly appalled that they didn't seem to have it, until Lauren figured out that they actually had a large basement devoted entirely to wine (and some other alcohols). Ah Italy, you did not disappoint.

After that we took the metro and a bus back to the hotel, where Lauren promptly passed out (around 18.30). I wanted to get our camera batteries recharged, so I plugged them into our surge protector (no power adapter, because the battery chargers take 100 to 240 volts). Upon turning the surge protector on, there we a loud pop and the lights went out, followed promptly by the smell of burnt gun powder. Awesome. What I didn't think about was that an American surge protector considers European power (240 volts vs our 120 volts) to be a “surge”. Stupid me. But on the bright side, because they couldn't get someone out to fix our room's power that night (I'm not sure the lady at the desk knew about circuit breakers, or maybe it is a different setup), we got moved to a suite without extra charge. Sweet. On the downside, it wasn't easy packing all our stuff up to move in a pitch black room, but we managed.

We both went down for a “nap” around 19.00 – 19.30, but just like last night, we never actually woke back up and just ended up sleeping all night. We still haven't eaten dinner since we got to Europe, since we haven't managed to stay awake long enough to eat it. I put the meat and cheese in the mini fridge so that we could eat it on the train the next day for lunch.

That was our second day in Italy. We forgot a wine opener, and still haven't figured out where to buy one. Lauren has our bottle of wine in her suitcase, so maybe we will figure it out in Florence. As for other random oddities, I'm always amazed at how small all the cars here are. It's kind of hard to imagine, but let me just say that it's a very odd when a minicooper is one of the larger cars on the street. The majority of them seem to range between smart car and mini-cooper sizes (and even the bigger ones are usually smaller engine diesels). I wish they would sell more cars like that in the US.

Me - in front of St Peter's Basilica

Me - Petting a black cat in the Vatican. He was adorable, and so friendly

Roof of the Sistine Chapel (taken before I was told to not take pictures)

Inside of St Peters Basilica - thanks to my tripod, for helping me take such clear pictures in such low light

More inside of St Peter's Basilica

Lauren - In front of the Spanish Steps
St Peter's Basilica at sunset from the Spanish Steps
City at sunset from the Spanish Steps

Trevi Fountain at night