Rome Day 2

Today, we headed out for our hop on hop off tour of Rome. Just a brief explanation for anyone who doesn’t get it basically we were able to get on and off a bus at 17 different places throughout the city and while riding the bus you could listen to a tour about some of the stuff you were seeing and such. My speakers never really worked so I just took pictures.

Well we started the day at a Church Santa Maria Maggori or something like that and after that it was go go go! So much to see in Rome and only 2 days, not enough time at all but I was glad we had this tour because we really did get to see a lot. After we explored the church and plaza back to the bus. Next stop that I remember was the Coliseum complete with people dressed up like gladiators. We didn’t go in but It was still cool to just see from the outside and we did peek in and saw some of the inside. Also the area around the Coliseum contained other ruins like columns and I think some super old houses in the caves nearby but we didn’t wander all the way over that way.

Back on the bus again we drove past Nero’s circus. Which was another stop but we didn’t get off this time. Next stop that we did disembark on was a small Island with Basilica on it. It was great because the bridge and island were great scenery to get a picture and the church was cool too… lots of photo opportunities today! :) Back to the bus again and the next stop was a archeological dig site where they had uncovered what they were pretty sure were the remains of 5 different temples each built at different time periods. That was one of my favorite parts of the day. I don’t know why but seeing things so old is just not something that I see every day so it is pretty cool at least to me. The site was also a local adopt a cat site.
They seriously were all over!

After that next stop was St. Peter’s which we didn’t get off at (well I did just to get a picture of the bus) so we waited while the driver took his break. Next stop was the castle Sant Angelo. Again we didn’t enter in it but it was cool just to walk up to the bridge leading to it had 12 different angels on it each with some object of sin I think. Not quite 100% sure on that anymore… anyway back to the bus.
Next stop I remember was the Pantheon but before that we went and explored plaza navona which was a cool plaza with and Egyptian obelisk that was somehow related to Ramses. Yeah I don’t remember much more than that about it. Pantheon was great though so cool just to see. The inside was all redone by the Christians when they took over so it wasn’t a place for pagan worship and sacrifice. The floor sloped slightly so that liquids would run off. The inside and outside were both pretty impressive, and hard to describe. A picture is worth a thousand words so ask me to see pictures sometime!

Next stop I remember was the font de trevi or fountain of trevi. It was a pretty cool looking fountain again with an Obelisk in a plaza with some tents and such for shopping which we didn’t even stop at! We were on a mission to finish out tour before time ran out! Next and last stop I remember was plaza republica. Which had a fountain a church to go into which we did that was interesting because it had a bunch of stuff up about Galileo only problem was it was getting dark so picture taking got kinda hard. After that stop we went back to where we started and actually went to mass in the Basilica Maria Maggiore. We didn’t really understand a word but Alleluia and Amen but it was still cool to hear a mass in Italian. There was a lot more singing in the Italian mass than the Spanish but maybe that was just the church. After that more delicious Italian food and then bedtime because the day was exhausting! And tomorrow I was leaving to go back to Valencia. It was great to see my parents and Grandma and I can’t wait to see everyone in a week or so when I get home!

Sorry that the descriptions are so bad. Should have wrote when things were fresher in my memory. I do have about 450 pictures of just this day though so hopefully that will make up for the bad descriptions.