2. Rome Italy, what was once the center of the world

Rome is one city that I have been to before, but I was glad to be back seeing as how it used to be the center of the world. Rome is a huge city and there are so many sights to see. We spent the first day touring Rome’s sights and the next day we spent at the Vatican.

Although I have to say my favorite part about Italy is the gelato. Gelato is an Italian ice cream that trumps the ice cream we are used to back in America. The reason it is so much better is because it contains way more sugar than normal ice cream and is denser and has less air in it so basically each bite has way more flavor than ice cream. Most of the money that we spent on this trip probably went toward gelato seeing as how each one of us probably had 2 to 3 gelato’s a day. I pretty much tried every flavor and I think the best flavor combinations would have to be lemon and strawberry, or hazelnut, chocolate, and stracciatella (kind of like chocolate chip) depending on the mood.

Our second day in Rome was spent at the Vatican, which is THE Roman Catholic Church where the pope lives. We has initially planned to get there early since there is normally massive lines but seeing as how it was day light savings on that particular Sunday and no one was aware of that we were particularly early. After arriving we saw this huge line forming in St. Peters Square and decided to get in. After about an hour we started to pile into St Peter’s Basilica, the largest Christian Church in the world, and took our seats for what we then realized was going to be a mass. Once the mass had started we realized that the priest giving the mass was in fact the actual POPE, Pope Benedict XVI. This was an incredible experience seeing as how the Pope rarely ever gives mass or is even present in the Basilica for Sunday mass. Needless to say we are now among the few people in the world that have actually gotten to see the Pope.

After mass we still had a couple hour to tour around the Vatican city and see a couple more sights in Rome. After that we caught another Tren Italia to Florence Italy. Luckily this train was not as bad but still really dirty.

Ciao for now

The Colosseum. One of the oldest buildings in the world built in AD 74.

A Roman Column which are randomly scattered throughout all of Rome

The Roman Imperial Forum where Cesar and other Roman Emperors reined over the empire.

400 steps and at the top was a church.

Victoria and I were among the two people that had been to Rome before and we decided to opt out of touring the Colosseum and Roman Forum with the rest of our group. Hence, we went to see some other sight that we had not seen before and are normally not on the list of the main sights to see. So this is Victoria picking some important Italian man's nose

Me, trying to imitate some Italian guy. Both of these two picture were taking from the Italian National Museum which Victoria and I were able to sneak into by accident kind of. We has walked up the 400 steps on one of the picture above to a church and followed some people through the back entrance of the museum where we spent like 20 minutes seeing the important stuff.

The Trevi Fountain

The Group in front of the Trevi Fountain

Cailin, Ryan, Brittney, Matt, Me, Victoria, Sheldon

Me throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain. The point of throwing a coin in is to ensure your return to Rome. This must hold true since I had thrown a coin into the fountain when I was in Rome in 2007 and I returned. So I threw another coin in meaning that I probably be returning to Rome in the future.

The Vatican. We are standing in the Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter's Square) and in the background is the Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's Basilica)

Bishops walking down the aisle at the end of mass.

The Pope, Pope Benedict XVI

Rome has several of these obelisks scattered throughout the city. The obelisks were actually taken by the Romans form the Egyptians during the Roman Empire.

Caitlin and I in front of the four rivers fountain. On this fountain there are four men that depict the four most important rivers of the four main continents in the world. The Danube in Europe, the Nile in Africa, the Ganges in Europe, and the Rio Grande in the Americas.