Rome is HOT! It has been 80+ degrees each day we've been here, and the Italian sun beats down on you like no other!

The first thing we did after we checked in to our hotel is head to the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel. Neither of us being museum people, we wanted to see the Sistine chapel and ONLY the sistine chapel. First of all, the line to get into the museum spanned 2 blocks, but at least it moved quickly. After you get into the Museum, you need to stand in line for the tickets. After you get tickets, you have to stand in line to get into the exhibit. Once you get in, you have to fight HOARDS of people. The museum is built like a maze and there is only one way to get in and out and it is through each exhibit. So, we walked for 2 hours, just to get to the damn Sistine chapel. Not only that, but people are not friendly when they are in crowds. Italians are not nice people period, and put them in a crowd, and wow. We might as well have not gone. So after 2 hours of elbows and pushing and shoving, we got into the Sistine Chapel. It was pretty amazing, except for the b****y italian lady (who wasn't even a guard) that decided she would go around and loudly tell everyone who wasn't Italian not to take pictures, when the guards kindly requested no one take pictures and for everyone to remain silent. Us being us, we took pictures anyway but didn't get caught, so enjoy the pictures and the video.  We had to break the rules to get them!  Happy to have seen the masterpiece, we wanted out of there as fast as possible.  But, like I said, there's one way in and one way out, so after another hour of winding down halls of stuff that looked cool but had no meaning to us, we were finally out.

Next, we went to St. Peter's basilica where we picnicked in the piazza.  The line for the basilica put the one for the Vatican Museum to shame, and we didn't meet dress code, so we left there and walked by the castle of St. Angelo, went by the Trevi fountain which was really cool and beautiful (the water outlet had been there 19BC and the fountain was built in it for 1762, got some Gelato and walked through Piazza Navona (where it was family day and full of live concerts, street performers, and poeple), saw the spanish steps (overrated), Pantheon, and ended the day in ancient rome with the colosseum and the roman forum (very cool). The crowds elsewhere weren't as bad as the Vatican museum, however the only other thing we needed tickets for was the colosseum.

The pantheon was pretty amazing. It was built in the early 2nd century, and is well preserved (no wonder, the walls were 25 feet thick)! Each bronze door (which we have a picture of Will standing in front of) weighs 20 tons! In the ceiling is a perfect circle open skylight, to let in sun and rain. It now stands as the final resting place of a few emperors and the painter Raphael. Oh yeah, and a tourist attraction of course.

The colosseum is HUGE!!! There's a picture in the album of Will right next to an arch, and there are 3 stories of those, plus one on top of that. They started building the colosseum in 72AD, and held an inaugural contest in 80AD that lasted 100 days and killed off 5,000 beasts and countless gladiators.

What was even cooler was the fact that the colosseum had a retractable roof! They had pulleys, beams, and a team of sailors who winched out the canvas to shade the seats from the sun and the rain.  Talk about being ahead of their time!

It was awesome to stand on something that had been there that long. If walls could talk... they'd say, "Will broke a piece off of me and took it home with him because he thought I was cool..."  Don't tell... it's a secret!