When in Rome.. Part 1

This past weekend, a few of us took a trip out to Rome for a couple days. Rome is a far bigger city than Florence, which was an interesting experience for most of us considering we thought Florence was pretty big in the first place. However, it makes sense considering that Rome was the capital of a nation ruled over most of Europe way back in the day.

The 6 of us (myself, Rachael, Marianna, Katie, Karina, and Brittany) left last Friday morning. Having already bought tickets, we waiting at the station for our train to arrive, at which we hopped on around 8:15. Let me tell you, this train was pretty nice.. it was a "EuroStar" class train, and for those of you unfamiliar with it, it's enough to say that these trains are the really nice ones. Comfy seats, along with a small sort of table in front of you, and even some electrical outlets.

Anyways, enough about the train. It was a nice hour and a half ride, and we pulled into the Rome train station around 10:00. From there we went and found the hostel we were staying in, and dropped off our stuff. Then we went back to the train station to hop on the metro towards the Vatican City. Although it was a bit hectic, it was easy to buy tickets (which were only €1!), and we quickly figured out the metro system, which turned out to be really simple. Soon, our 1 hour walk was over after the 10 minute metro ride, and we surfaced near the Vatican City. Also, I failed to mention that at this point, it was pouring in Rome. Bleh. But we survived.

As we were trying to figure out where to find the entrance to the Vatican Museum, we ran into a tour group recruiter, who offered a tour to us, which we decided to take up, since apparently the tour group didn't have to wait in line to get in. So off we went, and eventually got inside the museum where we got our tickets and our audio receivers, which picked up signal from a microphone that our guide would talk into, and each of us had headphones to hear what he said. A very convenient little piece of technology.

The Museum itself is massive. According to our guide, if you spend 60 seconds on every piece of art in the museum, you'd be there for 12 years! Of course we saw plenty of work, in particular those done by Michelangelo and Rafael (who had an entire room alone of his work!). Connected to the museum is the Sistine Chapel, which was incredible. It wasn't shaped how I thought it would be.. it was very close to being a rectangular cube, without any sort of dome like a lot of the churches here have. That didn't take anything away from it though, and the fact that Michelangelo painted the ceiling and everything so quickly, pretty much by himself.

Later we left the museum and popped into St. Peter's Basilica. We're pretty sure Mass was just ending, because we could hear the organ being played! The church itself looked as though it was made almost completely of marble, and everything looked fantastic. Also housed there is Michelangelo's Pietà.

After spending a good amount of time there, we began to head back. On the way, we decided to all write a postcard and take pictures of ourselves sending them through the Vatican City postal system. Now with that fun over, and it getting late (around 7:00 PM at this point) we went back a metro station and took it to the main train station where we could walk nearby to our hostel. That particular night they were having free pasta, which was rather convenient!

So that was our first day of the weekend in Rome, last Friday. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 of our trip!