Monday, July 2nd 2007: ROME!!

In front of the Vatican

Roman Fountain

The Colosseum

The Pantheon
The group at the Colosseum
Today was an interesting day. Rome was amazing but we ran into a few bumps here and there.
We left the hotel at 5:50 this morning to catch our train and two of the girls ended up missing the train waiting in line at Mcdonalds! Luckily they got on another train and we met up in Rome. Our first stop was the Coliseum! It was INCREDIBLE! You can still see all the underground passageways and rooms where the gladiators would get ready and the exotic animals were kept! It was bigger and better than I thought it would be. It was about an hour wait to get in but it was well worth it! Afterwards, we jumped back on the bus and headed to the Pantheon. We also stopped for some famous Rome pizza and gelato. The gelato here is so good! I wish I could bring some of it home for everyone to try. The Pantheon was so beautiful. We were happy to find out that it was free to go in too. The best part was when the rain started coming down into the building through the oculus of the ceiling. It was such a great experience. We then went to the Vatican but didn’t go through since there was a 2 hour + wait to get in and we didn't have the time. I would have loved to have seen St. Peter's and the Sistine Chapel but we later found out the Sistine was closed anyways. We jumped back on the bus and went to the Roman Fountain. It was so pretty! We were told that if you throw a coin into the fountain you will come back to Rome again sometime in your life so we all spent some time at the fountain taking pictures and throwing in our coins. We left Rome around 7 pm and got home around 10:30. It was a long day but well worth it! I HEART ROME!