Days 7-9: Rome

Ah, Rome.  The history!  The crowds!  The food!  The SUNSHINE! 

We really did have lovely sunshine in Rome.

It made the awesome sights even more awesome!

But we actually  have a mixed opinion of good old Rome.  As you can see by all the pictures on my facebook album, we definitely had a great time.  But we had mixed feelings about all the crowds... and also all the money that we watched fly out of our wallets.  

Some things in Rome are free.  Like walking around and enjoying the greenery or the views.  Or even some of the monuments like the Pantheon.  

But for everything else (Colosseum, Vatican Museums, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum, and any other museums) COST.  Now don't get me wrong, it was definitely worth it.  Definitely.  But was it my favorite city?  Not really.  It's cool to see once but it doesn't score high on the "visit again" list.

Oh and speaking of the Vatican... helpful tidbit for ya: it's closed on Sundays.  Who knew, right? ;o)  Actually, we did know.  But only just barely.  The first of the two days we could really sight see (a Saturday and Sunday) Jesse decided to double check if the Vatican was open on Sunday... cause we were thinking we wanted to do the Colosseum on Saturday.  WELL lo and behold the Vatican is only the most important Catholic church ever.  I guess they still keep the Sabbath, eh?

Thankfully, we realized this in time and were able to see all the amazingness of Vatican City... mostly the Sistine Chapel :o)  A dream come true.

Then the next day we went to see all the old stuff.  The Colosseum was awesome, as expected.  That was probably our favorite part of Rome.

Funny small world story: while standing in line for our video guide we met a Canadian couple who had been to both Corning AND Cape Cod :o)  Shout out to NY and MA!  We thought of you all the way from Rome!

Oh oh another funny story!  So there were these drinking fountains throughout the city and we just weren't really sure about them... were they safe?  For drinking?  For hand washing?  What?  When we finally saw people drinking out of them we were a bit disappointed that we hadn't learned it sooner (it was the last day) but still very excited.  THEN we were completely wowed when an old couple showed us that the water spout turns into a TRUE drinking fountain when you plug it's mouth!  How fun!  Here's a video of Jesse demonstrating it.  You better enjoy it cause we got a few funny looks and laughs while filming!

So that, in a nutshell, was Rome according to theJesses :o)