Rome-ing Around

Rome has been pretty packed so I didn't get around to writing until tonight, the last night in the Eternal City. Anyway because of that, this is another long blog. No obligations to read, of course :)





So day one was basically dedicated to the Vatican. The museums, the chapels, etc. Their collection of art was impressively large, but almost to the point where it looked like a lot of it was just tons of statues in storage: too cluttered. Anyway, high points for me included seeing Raphael's School of Athens and the statue of the Augustus of Prima Porta. Oh, and this dog which looked like Annie :)






From there we went to the Trevi fountain where we threw in our coins.



After that, we went to the Pantheon. Kind of cool to see where Raphael is buried right after seeing his works at the Vatican, but overall the Pantheon was a bit of a letdown, mostly because of the scaffolding over half of the outside. Oh well...

So that night we got home and decided to go to a pub crawl which had been recommended to us by some girls we met on the train. We actually ended up seeing them there too, which was a lot of fun. Small continent! It was Rambo themed, if you'll believe that. So ridiculous but so much fun. We met on the Spanish steps and from there went all over Rome. Awesome.

The next day we went to the Borghese Gallery. We had reservations as they are mandatory. It's expensive for the size of the gallery, but the content made it so worth it to go. The highlights were the statues by Bernini of course... they just looked real, it was incredible. What surprised me was the BEATIFUL ceilings. Every single room had these amazing cielings painted with gods, and lined with statues, so when you looked up it was like you were looking through the roof to heaven. I loved it... probably partially due to the nerd in me trying to figure out which god was which based on their iconography. Lame I know :) Often the ceiling would feature a legend which was also the subject taken up by the main statue in the room too, which was rad. Anyway no pictures were allowed inside so I have no photodocumentation this time, and I'm starting to sound like a really big tool so MOVING ON...

Next we went to St. Peter's, because the line to get in was way too big on Vatican day. I'm so glad we went because it was really impressive inside. SO huge and SO much art. I wish we could have gone up the dome but we were tired and it was yet another expense. None of the pictures do justice to the sweetness of the building, so I won't even try. I'm sure googling it would give better results.





Our last day in Rome was the ancient day, and by far my favourite. The Colosseum was cool, but I'd say I prefered the Via Sacre. Just something about arches I love, especially the Arch of Titus :)




We were pretty tired, so we bused home from Trajan's Forum with the Column. There was also this incredibly huge building across the street from the Forum that I had NEVER heard of but it was spectacular. I'll figure out was it was called later.





Ciao,
Mayne

(get it? so funny. not.)