Today was the day we would visit the Vatican museum and the St. Peter church. For the first time we took the metro to get us there. This was an experience we never had before. In short, the subway is a big mess (it all looked like it was still under construction, loose wires, unsafe footing) and we never take a metro again if we do not have to. When we arrived at the station we were soon harassed by many people who offered us tickets (with and without tours) so w...

Today we did a route that should eventually bring us to Castel Sant'Angelo near the river Tiber. On our route we (of course) found some churches and even found a park with big bronze statue of an army officer and his horse. There was even an unused guard house, which we used for a funny picture. A bit further, the Palazzo del Quirinale two of these guard houses still in use by officers with guns. Must be hard to stand still all the time! In front of this building...

Today we planned to go to the Villa Borghese Park. Along the way we came across a church (Basilica Santa Maria Degli Angeli e Dei Martiri). Although the building itself gave no great promises, the inside was quite impressive. The statues, decorated columns and ceilings were a nice surprise. After we enjoyed the inside splendor we continued our walk to the park. While walking we already noticed this was a very different part of Rome. Everything was clean, the buil...

We had to get up EARLY to get to the plane that takes us to Rome (Italy). After we landed and got our suitcases we soon learned that the Italian 10 minutes is way longer than our own when we tried to get on a shuttlebus. When we finally arrived in about 1 hour and 45 minutes we soon found our hotel Bergamo. It had a 1001 Nights feel to it and compared to the small rooms we encountered in Japan, very roomy. We soon set to the Colosseum where our walking tour of ou...