Italy Day 1

We made it! Our flight from Chicago to Rome was delayed an hour and a half, I think. With the time change, and not knowing when we were supposed to arrive originally, I'm not quite sure. I know we left the US late, but whatever. We arrived around 11 am.

Customs went well. It was super crowded which didn't sit well with me. Oh and we didn't get a stamp in our passports :( I guess now they just wave you through.
We got through, and took a train directly from the airport to the main train station, then set out on foot to find our hotel. Once we found the hotel, we took showers and crashed for 2 hours, then we set off!

First, we wanted to find a SIM card for my phone so that way Tania (Ashley's friend from Germany that lives in Rome) could contact us and meet up with us eventually. That took some doing, but we eventually found a phone place down the street from our hotel. After we had walked around 4 blocks or so. Once we had found the phone store, it was interesting. Talking to the girl trying to help us that didn't really speak English with my horrible (yeah, more like non-existent) Italiano was the easy part. It would get more difficult when my mom was trying to 'help'. But, after this, hopefully she understands what a SIM card is. Or at least what it does... Slowly but surely, I hope I am helping my mother no longer be a luddite!

After that, we found the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, which was only a few blocks further from our hotel than the phone store. It was amazing. It had many pope's busts all over. And it had confessionals lining each wall. Each confessional had a sign on it saying what languages were spoken there and also a 'script' for the person confessing to read. The inside of this church astounded me. In America, we do not have ANYTHING that old, except trees. Although the trees are quite amazing, I loved how much history there was within those walls. It amazed me how detail oriented every little thing was. The colors of the panting were actually quite clear, given how old they are. (yay for restoration!)

Next we walked over to the Trevi fountain and had gelato while watching all the groups and reading the history of the fountain. I didn't realize what a tale it was about how the fountain came about. I threw a coin in of course. The legend is that any foreigner that tosses a coin in ensures a return trip to Rome.

The last stop of the day was the Pantheon and Raphael's tomb. I loved it, how intrecate it was. How open the whole space felt even though there were a gazillion people in it. It was also intresting to find out that the dome was covered in 450,000 lbs of bronze but the bronze was taken down and used by Bernini at St. Peters and such. My favorite part of the Pantheon was the wonderful mosaics inlaid in the floor and the painted ceiling over the alter directly across from the entrance.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for dinner. We had pizza and spaghetti carbonara (pasta, eggs, and bacon), neaither of which was very good. But I think we just picked a bad place. We have 2 more weeks here anyway, so we're bound to get better food.

It was so much to do in just over 4 hours with minimum sleep, but worth every step.

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