This summer we had the pleasure of hosting Derrick's cousins Candice and LaChelle on their first trip to Italy. During their visit, thanks to the cheapness of Ryanair plane tickets ($50 round trip!), we were all able to enjoy a long weekend in Rome. The girls and I flew down first thing Friday morning, to make the most of our time, and then Derrick was able to join us by flying down Friday evening after work.
One of the really cool things we were able to do during our girls' day on Friday was take a special tour of the excavations underneath St. Peter's Basilica. The tour showed us the different layers of the previous cathedrals under the current St. Peter's, as well as where the possible remains of St. Peter were discovered. Our tour group was really small, probably 10 people, and we had to go through all these different check points to get in. We really felt like we were getting a behind the scenes view of St. Peter's, because there were no other tourist in this part of the Vatican.
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| Usually you do not get all this space to yourself at the Vatican |
We weren't allowed to take pictures during the excavation tour, but we made up for that by taking lots of pictures afterwards when we went into St. Peter's itself.
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| LaChelle in St. Peter's Basilica |
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| We are wearing our Vatican approved attire.... |
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| Which we promptly removed when back out in the heat! August is not the optimal time to visit Rome. The heat was pretty intense, even for us Houstonians who claim to know a thing or two about heat and humidity. |
After St. Peter's we continued the Vatican theme by heading over to the Vatican museum. There are paths through the museum that can take up to 5 hours, but we were all pretty worn out by this time so we took the express track and limited our museum tour to about an hour and a half.
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| Candice and LaChelle at the winding stairs in the Vatican museum |
That evening we headed over to the Trevi fountain to make some wishes, eat gelato, and enjoy the cooler evening weather!
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| Making their wishes! While we were here this random guy kept following Candice around and repeatedly saying "I love you". Still haven't decided if it was cute or creepy. |
Saturday morning our first stop was the Colosseum There we met up with some Cameron friends who were making a pit stop in Rome before heading back to the US from an assignment in Romanian.
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| Cousins at the Colosseum |
After the Colosseum it was just a short walk across the street to the remains of the old Roman circus and forum.
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| The cousins and Candice and Jay (Cameron friends) in front of the Roman Circus. |
That afternoon we walked around Rome taking in more of the historic sights and even doing a little shopping. I bought a really cute dress while we were there which I promptly ruined after wearing once by failing to translate the words "lava secco" (wash dry). I guess that means we'll just have to take another trip to Rome so I can buy another one ;-) . It sounds like my cousins will be making the trek to Rome this coming summer, so that sounds like a pretty good excuse to me!
Sunday morning we wanted to get in a few remaining sights before we had to catch our flight back to Milan. First stop was the Castel Sant'Angelo. We didn't actually go in the castle, but we enjoyed walking around the grounds and eating kebabs on the lawn.
We made one last pass by St. Peter's Basilica and then headed to our last stop of the trip, the ruins of the Roman baths.
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| Remains of the Roman Baths |
The remains of the baths were huge, but it was a little heard to visualize what they once looked like so here's a picture of help you out.
Even though the weather couldn't have been hotter, we had a really excellent trip to Rome (and the heat gave us a good excuse to eat lots of gelato!). It was fun seeing the girls experience Rome for the first time, and I really enjoyed getting to share that adventure with them!
