Ancient Rome and the Vatican

We've covered alot of ground in our first 24 hours! Yesterday, as you can see from the pictures, we met up with Emily and Mike and went straight for the Colosseum. Planning ahead has paid off for us well so far, as we were able to skip the long line for tickets by buying a Roma Pass. The pass gives us three days of unlimited public transportation, plus free admission to any two of several sites around Rome.

The odd thing about the Colosseum is that it is exactly what you would expect. It was very cool inside, but after about 10-15 minutes of roaming about, you really feel as though you've seen it all. That's not to say we didn't enjoy it, but it certainly didn't impress us the way the Pantheon did.

We arrived at the Pantheon at dusk, just as the interior lights were beginning to come on. What a beautiful place it is! From the outside (besides the colonnade at the entrance) it is very boring - just a boxy old brick building. But inside, every inch is covered in beautiful black, white, and red marble. We spent about an hour inside, marveling at the sights (including Raphael's tomb), then got some dinner from a ristorante in a nearby alley.

The food was a good as we had imagined it would be. The wine was also, unfortunately! Emily and I tried to avoid drinking it, but couldn't help ourselves, and soon our jetlag overcame us. We were back in our room and asleep by 9:00 pm!

We're still not quite adjusted to our new time zone yet, but we were able to get up and out on the town by 9:00 this morning, after a tasty breakfast in the hotel's cafe. We met Emily and Mike at their hotel, then went to the Vatican Museum. Our guided tour took us through roughly half of the galleries and we saw some very famous works of art, including Raphael's frescoes of Constantine and the philosophers of ancient Greece. The tour finished with the Sistine Chapel, which fully deserves all the praise it receives!

We took a short walk under the Basilica to see the tombs of past popes, including John Paul II, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Peter. Then we went into the Basilica itself. Wow! The building truly is large enough that you could fit our entire neighborhood inside of it. And everything is built on a scale to accommodate it, like the three times life size marble statues. So you didn't really feel as though you were in a huge church, but instead that you had been miniaturized.

We've now returned to our hotel room for a siesta. This evening we plan on strolling from the Spanish Steps to Trevi Fountain. I'll load more pictures tonight!