The last part of our trip was in Rome, the place with all the historical places, and the most amount of ruins around. This place feels like i’m walking around in a living museum. Everything is historical and amazing. The biggest thing i noticed when i travel to europe is just how so many europeons travel within these places, like the way we travel to other states. Also, everyone wears dresses everywhere.
Here is a beautiful crumbling wall that use to be part of the walls that protected the Vatican. I met a couple friends from Rome, and they were telling me about the vatican and how they don’t really like them. How the vatican just has too much money, and have their own rules for how to do things. We stayed in a nice little hotel on the 4th floor of the city. What i found interesting is the way all the doors are set up. There is no such thing as a doorknob. The keyhole has the key that is turned and you just push in on the door.
Our first night there, we visited the vatican on a night tour. That place is so huge and beautiful, it is like watching how people tried to one up each other during the renaissance period.
Here is a hallway full of statues.
It is a nice cool night in Rome, so the weather was perfect. It felt like it was around 70 degrees when we were in the area.
The ceiling paintings on the wall are amazing, a lot of people seem to just ignore the ceiling and look at the statues in front of them.
This is Nero’s Bathtub. That is a beautiful kiddie swimming pool right there.
There is a beautiful hallway that is at least 4 football fields long filled with map paintings of the world. Just walking through this makes you gasp and thing about how people spent so much time making that. I don’t even know if i could spend this much time on one art project.
This is one of the most popular paintings out there. I didn’t realize how much raphael and michaelango hated each other. It must have been because of TMNT, that I thought they were best buddies. They said that raphael saw michaelango’s work on the sistene chapel and realized how good he was. So he painted michaelango into the picture. He is that guy in the middle with his arm on the table thing, and raphael is on the far right corner in the red, leaning against the wall looking out.
We eventually got to the sistene chapel, which they said we should not take pictures of, and I was kind of let down by it. It is really pretty, but for some reason, i found the room with all the maps to be more visually challenging. The chapel itself is really beautiful and has bible stories on both sides and a lot of bodies of saints going up heaven and other people going down into hell.
During this time, we also lost Sherri’s parents. I’m not sure what happened, but we didn’t really have good cell reception, so I just assumed they would meet us up at the next spot, but they actually walked all the way out of the vatican. Which really confused me, because I didn’t expect that to happen.
So my one vacation tip for people out there is to have a plan on what to do if you lose each other. Especially on a train. My parents and I always agreed that if we all could not get onto a train and got lost, that everyone would get off at the next stop. While if we are looking at places, if you get lost, you stay in that one area, and my parents would come find me. Or we designate a spot to meet every 30 minutes if we get lost.
Day 2 Rome:
We met our friends Federico and Simona (friends we made in greece last year) They are from Rome, so they gave us a great tour of their hometown.
Of all the attractions, the Rome Pantheon was the only one that looked really good on the inside. It didn’t look like a ruin at all, looked like a place that you could still use for meetings. All these places were so fun to look at in person. I think whenever I though of roman buildings, I didn’t think of them in terms of how influential their architecture is. How all the really pretty buildings that we see now usually try to emulate some of the high open ceilings, and exposed columns.
They brought us to one church that had the most beautiful ceiling. That dark space that looks like the top of a top of a tower is actually an optical illusion. It is just a flat ceiling, but from a certain spot, it looks like there is a dome. (Which is where i took my picture from)
We thanked our friends a lot for all they did. The nice thing about all the europeans is that they kiss on both cheeks, so it tricked Sherri a little, when we were saying hello and goodbye to them.
Then the next day in rome, we really just brought Sherri’s Parents around to random places we saw the day before, and to other churches that were around the area.
The last thing that we did in Rome, was enjoy a very romantic night in front of the Vatican.
It was relaxing just sitting around at night watching people walk around, and just listening to the sound of Rome. It is a very slow city once it gets dark, and it feels like time could freeze forever.
Overall, this europe trip was amazing and fun. I saw so many historical things that I truly can understand all that history I learned as a kid. It is weird experience realizing that my imagination and thoughts about a place were not as big and grand as the real thing.
