Rome!

After Switzerland, we flew to Rome.  

One thing I really liked about our little fights throughout Europe was that the flight attendants all spoke no less than three languages each. 

The first day that we got there we mostly just oriented ourselves with the city.  (And I'll be honest, we may have taken a nap because our flight that morning was so stupid early.)  That night we went to dinner and then went on a self-guided walking tour.  It's funny how busy Rome is (at least that part) at night.  There were people out walking and shopping and eating until about 10:00.  And it was a Monday night!  (Probably for FHE.)

Anyway, that night we saw the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Campo di Fiori, and the Piazza di Popolo.  We loved all the piazzas.  And the gelato.  (We decided early on that we would need to eat gelato every day.)

On Tuesday, we went to the Vatican City.  Our first stop was St. Peter's Basilica.

(I had to wait forever to be able to take a picture of St. Peter.  Everybody kept wanting to touch his foot and I didn't want them in my picture.)

This was probably the hottest day of our trip (and it wasn't even that hot) and we kept talking about how we were really glad that we didn't have to wait outside of the Basilica in July.  There's hardly any shade, plus it probably would have been more busy.

After the Basilica, we went to the Vatican Museum.  (And there was NO line!  We'd heard that sometimes the line will go all the way down the street!)

View of Rome from the Vatican Museum.

We have a lot more pictures from the Vatican Museum, but, these were some of our favorites.  And, a lot of the statues at the Vatican are nudes.  It seemed weird to take lots of pictures of nude statues.

Speaking of pictures, up until this point, I'd mostly been the one taking the pictures.  Mitch is obviously more of a photographer than I am, so you'd think he'd be the one taking the pictures, but he's also wayyy more of a photography perfectionist than I am.  (Surprise, surprise.)  So.  If he'd been taking pictures, we probably would have seen a lot less because we'd still be taking pictures of the first thing.  Case in point:  As you exit the Vatican Museum, there's a spiral staircase.  That Mitch loved.  I think we have like... fifty pictures just of the staircase from different angles.  And we were there for like... ten minutes.

Mitch makes me laugh.  Raise your hand if you can picture Mitch taking fifty pictures of this staircase.  ...  Mhmm.

After that we (ate more gelato and) ended up wandering around more.  Rome is fun to wander because there's stuff to see basically anywhere you go.  We ended up passing Trevi Fountain again, so we stopped to get our picture taken again.  (The first time we were there we had our picture taken by an amateur.  This time we asked someone with a nice camera to take it.  I've learned that--for the most part--if you ask people that are also carrying nice cameras to take your picture, they'll do a decent job.  In comparison, people that are taking their own pictures with their phones generally don't have much in the way of photography skills, even if they look friendly enough to ask and even if they are willing to take your picture.  Funny thing-- if I ask you to take our picture in front of the Trevi Fountain, we actually do want to be able to see at least some of the fountain in the picture.)

On our last day in Rome, Mitch and I went to the Colosseum and the Forum.

We love the Colosseum.

A lot.  And, we did the video/audio tour, so we actually learned a lot about the Colosseum.  It's pretty interesting.

After the Colosseum, we walked down the street to the Forum and a funny thing happened.  (Haha.  Get it?  A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum?)  Just kidding.

It was weird seeing all of these things and knowing the history of all of them.  

After both of those things, we hurried to the train station (by way of another gelato place and a bookstore) to catch a train back to the airport.  We'd originally planned on spending more time in Rome, but in the end, we added Lauterbrunnen to our trip and decided we'll go back to Italy sometime.  There's so much more there that we want to see!

Anyway.  This next picture says it all--

I swear, anytime we got on a train (or plane), Mitch was asleep in about seven seconds.  (I like to watch everything we're passing.  Mitch likes to sleep.)