All roads lead to Rome! (in 13hrs)

I hope you're ready for a massive post because I have tried and just Can't narrow down my pictures from this amazing place, so there will be a lot!!
This trip was a school organised trip, which was great as they sorted out accommodation, transport, and breakfasts for only 145 Euro, which is about $230NZD, a really good price for all of that! We left on Friday night at 8pm, and I quickly decided to shift to a double seat alone in anticipation of the 13h bus ride ahead.. It was the best idea I had all day, as later on people came looking for more spare seats and there was none! I don't know how I would've survived a full day sightseeing in Rome without that space to try and sleep. We arrived in Rome at 7am, and after dropping off our bags at the hotel we decided on going to see the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, and they were actually amazing! Its hard to believe coming from NZ just how old everything is there, and all of the things that have happened in those places over time.

These are the pictures of the Roman Forum, which was the political centre of Ancient Rome. It is the ruins of parliament buildings and statues of significant people, and is just incredible to see in the middle of such an urban place!

This photo is of the most important remains of the ancient plaza, this would've been a massive building in it's time, where processions and elections, public speeches, criminal trials, and even gladiatorial matches would have taken place!

These next photos are from the Colosseum itself, which I think for me has got to be one of the most amazing places I have ever been to, and my favourite place we went to in Rome.

It is massive, picturesque, and so intricately made that I have no idea how it was made without modern machinery. It is the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman empire, with construction starting in 72AD and ending in 80AD. The Colosseum was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles such as mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas based on classical mythology. It now has a modern stage put into it that is probably used for concerts, what an amazing venue!

If you can see in the base of the Colosseum in this panorama picture, it is not just normal flat ground as I expected it to be, but instead a network of underground tunnels, with the upper floor having been broken away over time. Apparently this is where they put the slaves and animals before they were put into battle.

I really can’t even imagine what went on here all that time ago, apparently they used a wide range of animals for public entertainment, they have a mini-museum inside the Colosseum with remains of bears and lions, proving that they were undoubtedly used for such purposes. I have no idea how they managed to bring them all the way there, it even said that they put emus in the ring and then shot at them with arrows to decapitate them as they were running around! How awful, luckily it didn't say quite so specifically how the slaves were treated in there.

I have a bit of a thing with collecting art from different countries, so when we saw a man surrounded in lovely watercolour paintings that he’d made himself, I couldn’t help but stop and look. I decided to buy a beautiful sepia coloured painting of the Trevi fountain, an impressive fountain that I hadn’t actually seen at that stage, but loved the painting so much that I bought it anyway, knowing that seeing the fountain was on my schedule for the next day! I don’t have a picture of the painting, but you’ll get to see the real thing later on in the blog! I do have a picture of the painter, I like to take pictures to remind me of who created my artworks, it makes it more personal. I think that he is actually painting another picture of the same fountain in a different way to mine, he's really good, that painting looks like a photo!

After many hours of sightseeing, we decided that we should try another speciality well known in Italy.. Gelato! I got Tiramisu flavour, just to make the experience even more Italian, and it was so delicious I loved it. Sorry it's not as beautiful as it could be, I ate some before I thought that I might like a picture of it too!

And of course one of the best things about Italy is its incredible Italian food! We managed to eat at a restaurant every lunch and dinner the whole time we were there, because it was only the equivalent of about $10-15NZD for an amazing sit down restaurant meal, so we didn't hold back!
This is a photo of me on the first night out, I decided to try gnocchi, because I've tried (and failed) to make it before and I really wanted to try the real thing. It didn't look like that much, but it was actually a very dense meal, and I really liked it, but I think I prefer pasta, which is slightly lighter.

 The next morning we got up early to go to the Vatican City, and as it was a public holiday (All Saints Day) and a Sunday, we heard rumours that we may get a glimpse of the Pope giving an address to everyone from the window, so we decided that it’d be a good time to go.

The Vatican is a small area (400m² I think) with a lot of massive impressive architecture inside, along with a Lot of tourists! We were told that there were significantly more than usual due to it being an important religious holiday. As we were walking towards the gates into the Vatican, we got caught up in a religious procession that was burning huge amounts of incense and holding up a massive strange shrine sort of a thing, which bobbed along in the crowd behind the clouds of incense. Luckily we could get past them quite easily, as the whole street was getting a bit overwhelmed with the strong smell of incense, and we weren't feeling too good with all that perfumed smoke around!

As we walked into the Vatican itself, I could understand just how much power the church had over the people over time, and still does to this day. There is so much ceremony associated with this place, and it was really interesting to see the emphasis and importance that was put on the rituals here. 

As I previously mentioned, there were a huge amount of tourists here. I was wondering what everyone was standing around the edges for, as you can see in the photo, and thought perhaps there might be something about to happen in the middle. It turned out that actually (unfortunately) that was the LINE to get into the Basilica, which is the church itself! If you look closely at the photo, you can actually see how the line ends around the two white scaffolding things on the mid-left, and goes ALL the way around, behind me, and back around the other side where it disappears off into the crowd! We decided that a 3hour wait just wasn't worth our limited time, so sadly we had to give the Basilica a miss this time. 

St. Peter's Basilica

One thing I really loved about Rome was how much work goes into public architecture. There are amazing statues everywhere, even on random bridges. These ones are ringing the Vatican.

At 12pm exactly, a huge round of applause starts up from the crowd, and I look towards the Basilica but see nothing. Then I look very closely at one of the buildings surrounding the Vatican, and see a tiny little man in one of the windows!! How exciting it was the Pope himself!! I have circled it for you in case you can't quite see where he is, keep in mind this picture is mega zoomed.. luckily I wore my contacts that day! He spoke mainly in Italian, but included many other languages in some parts, with very good pronunciation. It was just lucky that we happened to be going that day, because I'm not sure how often he actually gives addresses!

Here he is on the big screen!! This was before he came out to speak.

Here is a video I took of some of his speech, pretty cool!

T=

For lunch, we stopped at a nice little restaurant nearby and I decided to try my first real Italian pizza... and it was amazing! The crust was really thin, and it was full of flavour, and only 6 Euros, so about $9.50 for the whole thing! Yum! The next thing on our agenda was to visit the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain, both being must-see’s in Rome.

This is the Pantheon, commissioned as a temple to all gods of ancient Rome, in about 126AD. Although it is impressive outside, with its many columns typical of Roman architecture, it is just as impressive inside.

It is beautiful inside, with a massive domed roof, almost 2000 years after it was made it is still the world's largest unreinforced dome roof!

Weirdly enough, it has a big hole in the roof, which lets in a lot of sun, but also rain! I'm not sure what they do about it when it rains, but it makes it really nice and light when it's sunny!

This is my friends and I attempting to get a photo with the roof, I'm not sure how well it worked out!

After the Pantheon, we walked though many little cobbled streets on our way to Trevi fountain, named after the district that it is in in Rome, Trevi. It is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome, and one of the most famous in the world, standing 26 metres high and 20 metres long! I don't think I would call it just a fountain, but I'm not sure quite what I would call it.. something a lot more impressive! Apparently it is there because it marks the terminus of the fresh water springs that supplied ancient Rome with water for nearly 400 years, and that story is shown on the fountain itself. After seeing it I'm very glad I have a painting of it, its so impressive to look at! I'm getting great use out of the panorama function on my camera!

This man is the star attraction of my painting!

After all that sightseeing we were all quite tired, so we walked back to the hotel for a rest before dinner. On the way we stopped at a supermarket, and I found some amazing looking Italian pasta! The picture doesn't do it much justice, but they're actually huge tubes of pasta! I'm not quite sure how to tackle them, I wish I could take them home for everyone to try but they'd take up way too much room in my luggage which is unfortunately something which I am very much in need of! I can't wait to try them!




We chose another really nice Italian restaurant for dinner, this was my favourite restaurant I think. It had an Italian man playing us the piano while we ate, which was mildly distracting as he sounded like he was doing it for entirely his own enjoyment, with 'Grease' renditions complete with duets with the other waiters, amongst other rowdy classics. It was great though!
This is all of us (minus me taking the photo) waiting for our meals. From left to right the nationalities are Scottish, English, Canadian, NZ/English, Canadian/NZ and German. Definitely a bit of a mix! You can see the piano just behind the people on the right.

 I decided to get Carbonara, and I know I say that all of my meals are amazing, but this one really was! Yum! I would definitely order that again, Italians really know how to make pasta. They always come with a bowl of parmesan cheese for the table, and I love parmesan cheese so it was great!

You couldn’t hope for a better meal out, with a delicious gelato place just next door we were very satisfied with an Italian ice cream after our meal! I got a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of ferrero rocher, I’ve run out of adjectives to describe how nice it was! It was delicious, New Zealand is lagging way behind when it comes to good ice cream!

The next (and final) day we went back to the Vatican to see the Vatican museums and Sistine chapel, as unfortunately they were closed on the Sunday due to it being a public holiday. On the way we walked down the greatest counterfeit street I’ve seen, with Louis Vuitton, Gucci etc bags everywhere, not to mention sunglasses. I bought some genuine Ray Bans for only 10 Euro! Bargain! Especially as they’re over $200 in the shops...Well at least it says they’re genuine on the label, good enough for me! It also claims they’re polarised, but somehow I’m not sure if that’s pushing it a bit.

One of my friends almost got convinced into buying a bag, and they do look really nice, whether they are real or not!

We waited in an hour or so long line to get into the museums, in the rain, and were constantly harassed by opportunist men coming past every two seconds laden down with umbrellas trying to sell them to you. It didn’t matter if you were already holding one either! It just became funny in the end, you thought of new ways to reject them every time. There were also people trying to sell 'skip the line' tours for the museums, we might have been tempted but for 40 Euros rather than the 8 Euro normal entrance fee, it was definitely not worth it.

For some reason, one of them (Anut, from Ghana we found out) decided to stay with us for the almost the whole time we were in the line! Even though we told him we didn't want his tour, he just hung round repeating 'skip the line!' over and over. I'm not sure what he really achieved, as he actually stood with us trying to convince us for at least 45mins, but at least it was some entertainment for us, especially when another one came and tried to sell us a tour and we decided to pit them against each other! They weren't too impressed. 

Once we got inside it was well worth the wait, with many different pieces of artwork from sculpture..

to tapestry...

To the most beautiful ceilings that I have ever seen in my life! Every part of the building is painted, it's incredible.

Here is another part of a ceiling in which I loved the colours, imagine that being on your bedroom ceiling to look at every morning you wake up!

Because we weren't on a guided tour we just happened across this one, one of the most famous artworks in history! It's quite overwhelming to see so many massively famous pieces in once place.

Speaking of famous pieces, here is the second most famous piece in the world (after Mona Lisa), Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam' on the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, as part of a much bigger piece.

Unfortunately, again due to the lack of any sort of guide or map, we got to the end of the museums and realised that we didn't actually see this famous piece! So we had go go ALL the way through again, once we worked out that it was on the Sistine Chapel ceiling! It turns out that I'd actually already taken a photo of it the first time around, and just didn't realise what it was.. Maybe we should've taken Anut up on his tour..

 This was outside in a courtyard between the museums, I can't quite remember what it is but it's very pretty against the ancient buildings.

This was one of my favourite paintings there, by an artist famed for his skill in drawing animals. It's a beautiful massive painting, and quite different to many of the artworks on display.

This was the hall of sculptures at the end. I love the sculptures, as I can't even imagine how much work went into them. I constantly got the feeling that each individual piece should have pride of place somewhere, because so many amazing artworks are overlooked simply due to the calibre of work on display. Halfway through my friend commented that she was tired of consistently being in awe, because that's what it felt like the whole time you were in the museums, it was amazing.

After the museums we were quite hungry, and wanted to eat something decent before our upcoming 13hr bus trip back that evening. So of course we went to an Italian Restaurant! I got cannelloni this time, and yet again, it was delicious! There are many things that I will miss about Rome, and the amazing authentic Italian food is definitely high up on the list!