Final Days in Rome.

Not going to lie, blogging about all this is starting to get a little bit tedious. We just do so much and there's so much to say. Realizing that I'm already forgetting the little details of what we did only a week ago in France is giving me the motivation to keep up with everything though. :) Pressing on...

Day 3:

We slept in a bit to recover from the day before. We ate a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with raisins, cinnamon, and apples...and TRIED to buy our Harry Potter tickets. It didn't work. The site required a British zip code (we used our hostel's), and then it wouldn't accept our card. Uber frustrating, as you can imagine, because Katelyn and I are huge Harry Potter fans, and we really REALLY wanted to see it at midnight in England. 

ANYWAYS, we finally gave up and headed over to the Vatican, entering into the Piazza San Pietro.

PIazza San Pietro.

We walked through THE Catholic church--Saint Peter's Basilica. It is magnificent. The architecture, sculptures, art--everything. I just kind of stood there and gaped at everything.

inside of the basilica.

the Pietà--one of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures.

After we had had our fill of looking around Saint Peter's Basilica, we headed over to the Vatican Museums. We were in there for a mere two hours, but I loved what we saw (which was very little).We walked through many a gallery to get to the Sistine Chapel, and I loved every single one. There were a lot of artifacts from the Romans/Greek period of history, rich paintings, detailed sculptures, modern art...so so lovely and thought-provoking. There was just so MUCH stuff. I felt like I couldn't appreciate everything like it deserved. Here are a couple pictures :)

outside the Vatican Museum.

This purplish rock doesn't exist anymore in the natural world
(the Romans dug it all up).
A square inch of it is worth $100,000.
(katelyn told me this.
oh the things to be learned from eavesdropping on tours
we haven't paid for...)

The Vatican Museum. The building itself is beautiful. Covered in art.

some of the art.
i LOVED it.

We saw the Sistine Chapel (of course). Cameras weren't allowed and the guards were doing their best, but unfortunately, tourists aren't the most reasonable of people and hundreds of cameras were going off. Not going to lie, that really bugged me. First of all, can you not read the sign and hear the security guard yelling? Second, what's going to make YOUR picture so much more special than all the pictures on the internet you could use/look at? Third, bet your picture sucked anyway, since there's NO way you got even a third of the ceiling on your little digital point and shoot. Fourth, the flash on your camera is distracting to everybody around you, including me. Just stop already.

Now that my little rant is over, I'd just like to say that the Sistine chapel is incredible. Katelyn and I could have gazed up at the ceiling for hours. There was just so much amazingness that it was easy to skim over it all unless you were careful to spend some time looking at the individual parts instead of just absorbing the whole.

the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (pic from the internet, of course ;))
imagine an entire room that is covered with these amazing paintings.

After the Vatican Museums, we were beat, so we went back to the hostel. Rome is SO hot this time of year, and it just really takes something out of you--tires you out. 

On our way back to the hostel, we stopped at the Piazza del Popolo. It has an Egyptian obelisk from the 13th century. Pretty legit. We didn't stay long because the sun was pretty much cooking us by the second.

thirteenth-century obelisk, nbd.

We hid out in the beehive until the sun began to retreat and finally surrendered to the clouds and the skyline.

Feeling a bit braver and quite a bit more refreshed, we began walking toward Trastevere--known as "real Rome" for dinner. We got the hugest pizzas of our life. I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't a pizza of this size.

a plaza in Trastevere.

picture 1: our appetizer--fried fantasy. it was a rice ball with tomato and mozzarella
cheese that was breaded and fried.
picture 2: my dinner...the HUGE pizza that I couldn't finish. 

We crossed the Tiber River as we left Trastevere.
So beautiful.

Claro que we needed a little Giolitti's for dessert. So we began to walk and walk and walk...it was a long walk. But at least the weather was perfect and the city beautiful.

After we had finished our gelato, we headed for the Trevi Fountain. It was beautiful all lighted up. We threw a coin in the fountain to ensure a return visit to Rome. I sure hope it comes true. :)

Day 4:

We slept in big time on Day 4--took it real easy. Showered, packed, ate breakfast...

and eventually we made it to the Catacombs di San Domitilla. They were quite a ways from the tourist-y part of Rome. We had to take the metro almost to the end and then walk for about 40 minutes. 

It was a lovely walk though. It was a Rome without any tourists but us--a Rome with the occasional car meandering down the road, a Rome with old men sitting outside cafes, drinking their coffee and discussing the affairs of the country in Italian, a Rome with trees and pastures.

We arrived at the catacombs around 12:30, only to discover that they were closed until 2:00. So we just sat in the grass in the shade and waited.

It was finally two, and we had our tour in English. The catacombs were a really neat experience. We entered them through a fourth-century church. It was incredible to be inside that church--it was just so obviously ancient, and I just kept picturing Christians meeting here back in the day. It was 3/4 under the ground, so it was darker and much cooler than outside.

we couldn't take pictures inside of the basilica or the catacombs,
so i took a picture of the ticket.
this is what the basilica looked like.

The catacombs themselves were incredible. There weren't any bones...they removed them because people kept stealing them as souvenirs (weird, huh...). But originally, there had been almost 150,000 people buried there. We saw these two paintings over two of the tombs--I couldn't BELIEVE that they were still there. Wow. Just wow. The passages were so windy and narrow. I was lost within the first five minutes. It was strange to think about the Christians using these tombs so long ago.

a copy of one of the plaques found in the catacombs.
it's displayed now in the basilica.

We then headed over to the Santa Maria in Cosmedin to visit The Mouth of Truth. Legend has it that if you tell a lie while your hand is in its mouth, it will bite it off.

obviously, i'm an honest person.

We finished our visit to Rome with Giolitti's. We just COULDN'T leave without it.

i got peach and white chocolate with panna (homemade whipped cream)
oh, i was in heaven.

We ran back to the hostel, finished up a last couple things, and then headed for the train station a little before seven to take the overnight train to Paris.

our ever-so-small couchette.
we shared the room of six with an asian family.
we were relieved--they weren't sketchy at all. :)