Rome

Rome was amazing. That's all...just amazing. It was the one place that both of us loved. We got into Rome pretty late, so we basically just went to sleep. But the next day we got up around 7:30 a.m. and headed to the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. We expected to have to wait in a line for about three hours, like we did in Florence for the Uffizi, but we did not wait at all to get into the Basilica.
We started in the tomb of the popes, where almost every pope had a different style tomb, each decorated with beautiful artwork and craftsmanship. We walked through the tomb into the chapel.
The site was absolutely gorgeous, every part of the building was decorated with elaborate designs that were almost too intricate to see from the distance the visitors were forced to stay. There were beautiful marble statues along all the walls, and the cathedral ceilings were painted with detailed stories from the Bible.
When we got into the church, hardly anyone else was there. It felt almost like we had our own private viewing of the place. There were a couple of tombs within the church itself, where you could see the body entombed in a glass case.
We went into the attached museum to see some of the artifacts the church held in its possession, and when we came out, there were thousands of people in the church.
We left the church and headed to the Sistine Chapel. We stood in a moving line for about an hour before we reached the Vatican Museums. You have to go through the museums to get to the Sistine Chapel. The museums were filled with any kind of art you could think of, from Classical Roman art to Egyptian pieces. There was even some contemporary artwork there. But, the Sistine Chapel blew the rest away. We've all seen the pictures associated with the chapel, but they really do not do Michaelangelo justice. His work is one of those things that you have to see to really understand how important and historical it really is. The walls and ceiling were painted so that it looked like this flat room had columns and doors and statues surrounding the great hall. The painted curtains looked so real that you could hardly tell they were not there even up close.
We left the Vatican after that and did our own makeshift walking tour of the city- literally from one end to the other. We went to the Castel Sant' Angelo, which houses Hadrian's tomb. We didn't go inside, but we did circle the enormous cylindrical building.
We walked past the Piazza de Tribunali, which had huge, famous statues outside of the building, to the Piazza Navona. Here we walked around its huge fountains and took a lot of pictures.
The next stop was the Pantheon. This place was really cool because the outside was in ruins while the inside was almost perfectly preserved and protected from weathering. The inside had some cool statues, but the main attraction was the dome that filled the inside. The light shining through a circular opening in the top. The light was used in conjunction with lots of panels around the dome that was used as a sun dial.
We got some water from the fountains at the Pantheon, then headed to the Trevi Fountain to cool down. Legend has it, that if you throw a coin into the fountain with your left hand over your right shoulder you will return to Rome some day. If you throw 2 coins into the fountain you will get married soon. Three coins will lead to divorce. Needless to say, we didn't know which amount of coins meant which superstition, so we each threw a few coins, and didn't throw them in the right way.
We passed by the Colonna Traiana and Mercati Trainei on our way to the Foro di Cesare (Caesars Forum). Which is right next to the famous Roman Colosseum.
Similar to our luck in other places, the camera battery went dead just as we were arriving at the Colosseum. We decided to walk around a little and look at all the ruins and ancient roads before going back to the hostel for a nap and a nice battery charging.
That night, we returned to the Colosseum to see it lit up with lights. We walked around a bit more and saw a cool reenactment/play between the Forum of Caesar and the Forum of Augustus. We went back to the Colosseum the next morning and walked inside it, taking lots of pictures. They happened to have an exhibit of Eros (better known as Cupid) inside the Colosseum there at the time.
Lastly, in Rome, we went to the Roman Sephardic Jewish Synagogue, which housed a Jewish museum. The museum had lots of information about Roman Jews who were persecuted by several popes and then during WWII. We took part of a tour of the place, just to see the synagogue. It was like another world. The walls were all painted, as if it were a Roman cathedral, and the seats were like pews. If you didn't notice the menorahs in the room, you would have sworn it was just another cathedral.
The trip to the synagogue was kind of last minute, and we almost missed our train to Bari. Luckily, a very nice taxi driver, along with a hostel located very close to the train station helped our situation and we made it to the train, to Bari, and to the ferry.
We will talk more about the ferry and Greece when we get to Berlin.