Europe trip-Rome

I want to document this awesome trip before I forget the details. So I'll start with the first four days of this vacation!

Wednesday evening we got on our flight and took off around 6 pm. My parents got upgraded for free to business class! Lucky lucky people. We were stuck in coach... 

I've never been on a 9 hour flight before! It was crazy. We were offered dinner, which was pretty good actually! And we we got our own personal tv and watched movies all night. I finally got to watch American Sniper! Then I took a two hour nap. Then woke up and was uncomfortable so watched the big eyes movie (which was surprisingly really good!) finally, we landed in London. We got to London around 9:30, got to our new gate and got our first of many croissants. 

Finally, we landed in Rome! Wow. What a beautiful city!  Ruins everywhere!!!

Our apartment was right in Barbarini square.

We decided to walk to The Pantheon then go to dinner. On the way to The Pantheon, we walked by the Trevi fountain, which was closed, unfortunately. 

The Pantheon was the coolest place ever! It's exactly the same height as width. It's beautiful.
Outside our apartment in Rome...

Day Two:
We were only an 8 minute walk from our apartment to the Spanish steps. We walked to it and discovered we were on top of them already hah! So we didn't ever actually walk up them... :)

We had our four hour tour of the Vatican next. We found a little pasta place for lunch, and went on! It was SO hot outside. Like 95 degrees? But, it was awesome! Our tour guide was amazing and I learned so much about the Catholic Church!

 The whole group!

After the Vatican, we decided to go to Piaza Navona. It's a big square, with people selling art, restaurants, and some famous fountains. Basically it's a party! We spent the afternoon there, and ate dinner in the square :) We were pretty beat after that, so we walked home and called it a night.

Day Three:

This was the day that we laughed about the rest of the vacation :) You will see why later.

We started the morning with a tour under the Vatican, to see St. Peter's tomb! It was really cool! And only a handful of people get to do it a day, so it was pretty special.

Then we decided we wanted to see a bunch of different churches around the city (I cannot for the life of me remember which ones we were looking for...)

So, we went on the metro, got off, and found San Clemente. It was beautiful!

(good job greg... eyes closed...)

 Sitting in a church

 So, then Gary led us to the next church... and basically we just wandered around lost in Rome, unable to find this church they wanted to go to. We walked and walked and walked and walked... and were all a little over it. We kept going the wrong way lol. So, then finally they figured out where to go, they say "it's only a mile away! That's only a 10 minute walk. I don't know about you, but I don't walk a mile in 10 minutes!!! HAHA! Anyways, it was pretty funny, and the rest of the time we gave Gary a hard time for leading us astray in Rome.

This is all the kids after walking for hours...

Next was the FOOD TOUR! This was probably one of my favorite things we did the entire time in Europe. We started out in the Jewish Ghetto (is that how you spell it?), and walked all around ancient Rome. We went to 7 different places and learned all about the Roman culture and hidden things about the city. One restaurant was actually underground in some ruins! It was pretty awesome!

 ^ Our food tour guide leading us through the city!

 These buildings were built right on top of ancient buildings. You can even see the curve of the buildings :)

Day Four:
We woke up and went straight to the Colosseum for our last tour of Rome. It was a 4 hour tour and I was a little worried I would get hot and get sick of the tour after 2 hours. I guess I didn't really know what I was really learning about. I didn't know much about the Colosseum? Anyways, it was AWESOME. But yes, it was very hot, but worth it!

^Overlooking ancient Rome.

The Colosseum was SO much bigger once inside then it seemed on the outside. Oh my goodness. It was a little crazy. Also, I'm glad I didn't ever go to the Gladiator Games. They sound like they were horrible! Vomit everywhere, blood, and just filthy dirty. But, still awesome to learn about! (And now I want to see the movie The Gladiator...)
After our tour, our guide showed us a restaurant with some good pizza (Because we hadn't even eaten pizza yet!). IT WAS AMAZING. Best pizza I've ever had! It was right by the Colosseum, which was nice. After lunch, we grabbed some gelato (because let's be honest, we had it at least once a day) and got onto our train to Venice!