All roads lead to ROME

The girls and I got into Rome in the early afternoon on Monday the 21st. The train from Florence took less than hours. EJ was flying home the next day and the hostel she booked happened to only be a few blocks from mine. Vinesha was flying back to Spain to stay with family the next day also and she decided to spend the night in the airport. We said goodbye and then went off to see as much as they could in a day. I setteled into my hostel and found a good internet cafe. I did some grocery shopping and went back to the hostel for the night.

Tuesday morning I took the metro to Vatican City. I had no clue which direction it was when I got out of the metro, but there were streams of people walking in the same direction, so I followed them! I walked into the plaza infront of the Basicalla and it was filled with people. I began to walk to find the end of the line, and I ended up walking to the complete opposite side of the plaza the line was so so so long! It went really quicky, however, and I found my way to climb up to the dome. It was 2 euros cheaper to take the stairs all the way, and I slightly regretted not taking the elevator after i had been hiking the staris for a bit. over 500 stairs was really exausting in the non airconditioned building! The stairs took you all the way up to the top and outside of the basically. You could also stop at the balcony at the very top of the church inside and take a look down. I didnt look at the church at all before I started climbing to the dome and it was awesome to see it for the first time from so high up. Across the top part of the walls all around the church, there is latin script written and I heard a priest say that each letter was 6 feet tall! Everything is so massive and grand. I spent a lot of time looking at everything. I have a ROme travel book and it gives the top 10 sights to see in the basicalla, so I found all those and read a but about them. After the basicalla, I ate my lunch of jelly and nutella **ive run out of peanut butter and its 5 euros here! Thats like 8 US dollars!**, carrots, and water.

I couldnt find the Sistine chapel for the longest time! The Vatican City is a bit confusing. I didnt realize you had to go through this huge museum inorder to see the chapel. The museum turned out to have a big variety of stuff so it was interesting. It had old maps of Italy, rugs, marble animals, marble people, marble bath tubs, egypt stuff, and more more more. The sistine chapel is just that, a chapel. I would have walked through and just thought to my self that this church had a bit more paintings than others ive seen! There is so much to know to appreciate the chapel-- the aritsts, politics, technique, and the story the paintings tell. I did a good job of listening to tour guides throug the museum and in the chapel that I got my moneys worth!

Wednesday, today, I went to the collesuem. I chose to take a tour of the colleseum and ofPalentine Hill. The tour guide in the collesuem told us that it s black due to the last 10 years of car exaust and that the rocks should be pealry white. The collesuem has a lot missing, but at the same time its great because it allows you to see the architecture of the building. You can see all the cages that are located below what was the wood flooring where the fights took place. As I did my spanish presentation about the history of bullfightning, I learned that the romans had humans fight against bulls and this is where some say bull fightning began. The cages were used to hold those bulls and, as I learned today, lots of other kinds of animals too such as hippos, tigers, and more. The romans used sails to create shade and cover all of the 50,000 spectators from the heat which was really important since the gladiator fights happened in the afternoons, after the human verse animals fights in the morning. The also perfumed the arena with insents and liquid perfums becuase with hundres of animals below the flooring and blood and vomit and poop it didnt smell good, at all.

After the collesuem, another tour guide took us to the Palentime Hill where there are tons of roman ruins from BC times. The hill is really sacred and a very very desired after place to have you house, so basically, the empirors took over and made their palaces and gradens and homes there. There are even parts of the original marble flooring from the empirors palace still there. **And they let you walk on it here in Italy!** There is a house on the sight that Mussalani used during WWII times that is now a museum. Apparently Mussalani thought he was an emperor. The tour guide did a great job of pointing out specific rooms and telling us what they were used for and threw around lots of dates/years that I dont quite remember. I had lunch in the gardens and went down to the Roman Forum. It is more and more ruines and buildings and colums still standing and intact. Lots of really interesting stuff there. After the forum I headed back to the hostel for dinner.

I have one more full day in Rome and then I fly out on Friday. I finally booked a hostel for toronto so I am all set for my next travels.