Rome wasn't built in a day...

While it wasn't built in a day you certainly can see Rome in one action packed day.  We arrived at 7:30am and went straight to our hotel.  Well let me clarify, we went directly to our hostel style dorm room with 4 beds. It was clean but small and old.  We were only there for about 10 hrs total and it was cheap.  I can't complain. Our flight over had been fairly empty and Ben and commandered a row of 3 seats.  I slept for about 6 of the 8.5 hrs flight.  Its the best international flight I've ever had.  He slept too but for aonly about 3.5 hrs.

 The four of us left our stuff in the lobby, again a term I use loosely, and went to meet up with our friends who had arrived the night before.  We took the metro to the Spanish Steps then walked passed the Trevi Fountain to the Pantheon where we met Dan and Heather. We all walked to the Four Rivers Fountain where Lindsey and Andy left us to go see the Colluseum, The Forum and Palentine Hill.  We had seen it before (us several years ago on our first trip to Rome and Dan and Heather saw it the day before.)  So the four of us walked to the Capitoline Museum and saw some typical Roman scultpures and hda greaet views of the Forum and Palentine Hill.  Before arriving in Rome we had scheduled to see the Sistine Chapel at 2:30 so we then took the metro to the Vatican meeting Andy and Lindsey there.

I have to say I was extremely dissappointed in the Sistine Chapel.  It was small, dark, and not overly impressive.  I wanted to be amazed and I came out dissappointed.  Now, I'm not art historian but it wasn't all that distinguishable from other painted cathedral ceilings.  So with that we walked through more of the Vatican Museum and then to St. Mark's square and the Basilica-which I prefer.  It is still an impressive structure dead rotting bones and all.  (I don't understand the need to display rotting flesh of popes inside places of worship.) 

We then walked to Piazza Del Popolo and through the Borghese Gardens which were beautiful.  Dan had been instructed to find a place for us to eat dinner, which he did but it didn't open until 7:30 and it was now 6:15 and I was too hungry to wait, especially since we had just landed that morning.  Late dinner didn't sound like something I could take and be happy the next morning.  So we (all of us) found a small restaurant and had a passable Italian dinner so we could get to bed.  The best thing was the bruschetta-it was really good, everything else was ok.  

During the day we started our quest to find the best gelato in Italy.  And between the 8 of us we ate many flavors at many stands.  I had a really good coconut scoop during the day-it had flakes of coconut and was very creamy.  It started my quest for the best coconut gelato in Italy.  More on that in a later post.

Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Novoan.  One of my favorites.

Dan and Ben

We saw this in the museum and thought it looked like an ancient C3PO.  We took the picture for the boys.

The Forum.

Our hotel room.  The camera is in the corner of the room as far away as we could get it.  Lindsey ended blowing the circuits with her hair dryer but the guy was really nice. Can you see the sway of the bed? 

Over looking Piazza Del Popolo by the entrance to Borghese Gardens.

Trevi Fountain-a beautiful one and hence always crowded.  It it lighted at night and really pretty.

After dinner Andy, Lindsey and Ben and I went back to our room to go to bed.  It was now 9pm and we'd had a long day.  We had wonderful sunny and warm weather and walked about 7 miles total between all our sights and home.  I must admit I liked Rome better this time.  After our first visit when Noah was 20 months-I really didn't like Rome. It was a place I never wanted to see again.  However, since we had to fly into Rome in order to see the rest of Italy it was a necessity.  I have now upgraded my opinion of Rome to "you need to at least stop and see the sights there but don't give it more than a day and a half tops."  Food isn't fabulous, pizza stands on the street are lacking, its big and dirty but it does have great fountains and piazzas.