The Days are Just Packed

Rome is a huge city. I saw all of it in 24 hours. It was exhausting. Luckily, Rome is also an AMAZING city, so walking around it from 12 to 3 in the morning was more than breathtaking. We left our bags at the hostel and ripped a couple pages out of Rick Steves and followed his "Rome at Night" guided walk. Truly incredible. We saw the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and more, completely empty. I didn't truly appreciate Trevi Fountain until I saw it at 2 am and could hear the thundering fountains from 2 blocks away. Trevi during the day and Trevi at night are entirely different experiences. Here's some pictures from our late night ramble around the Eternal City.

Amazing lighting on the Colosseum at night

Piazza Venezia/Garibaldi Monument

Pantheon

Trevi Fountain, AMAZING

The next day Deanna and I made our way over to the Vatican Museums, stopping at Piazza Navona, home of la Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers), which depicts the largest rivers from each continent to which Papal Authority had spread at the time in river god form, those rivers being the Danube (Europe), Nile (Africa), Rio de la Plata (Americas) and the Ganges (Asia), and the Piazza Campo de' Fiori, which houses a daily market, on the way.

When we got to the Vatican Museums I found out that Madonna and Child could actually get more monotonous. What a feat. Luckily there was a Faberge Egg exhibit to liven things up a little,

And we saw the Sistine Chapel (no photos allowed. people do it anyway, but the guards were being pretty tough the day we went). We spent a good 2 or 3 hours there, then left the city and got some amazingly cheap and delicious gelato (much better priced than Milan, and more flavors too!). Then we kept walking. We saw the rest of the sights in Rome, like the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Piazza del Popolo, the Ara Pacis, and so much more. It added up to a lot of walking. We stopped back in the hostel around 6 to grab our bags then went to the station and got our tickets home, sat down on the train and r e l a x e d. Felt great. Rome in a Day: Doable, bordering on suicidal. 

P.S. For the Calvin and Hobbes book referenced in the title, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Days-are-Just-Packed-Collection/dp/0836217357