Tourists

We are a funny breed of people. Tourists. With our camera on our necks and our ball caps of our home teams. Our maps in hand guiding our every step to see as many things as we can and walk where millions of people before us have walked. And I mean millions. In Rome, more specifically the Vatican city, there is an average of 3 million people per day that come to visit. That's a lot of tourists. We have been surrounded by Asian tour groups, European and families from Iowa.The vendors are from Bangladesh, India and Africa. There is a rainbow of culture here. But a lot of racism too, I'll write about that in a later post.

The second day in Rome after sleeping a mere 3 hours before the breakfast buffet we had tickets for the hop on hop off tour bus. Thanks to living social discounted trips!!

DISCLAIMER: Aside from what you may believe about Doug and I taking this trip to Italy. WE ARE POOR! We don't want to appear rich or loose with our money. We are taking this trip purely because we are celebrating 10 years of an amazing and difficult and rewarding marriage. We are spending time with each other that we haven't had in years and we are going to enjoy every minute of it. If it means spending $8 on a stupid picture at the Trevi fountain so be it. We deserve it and you do too. Debt is hard, but it shouldn't keep you from living and experiencing AMAZING things.

Okay, back to the double decker, red party tour bus. Just kidding. It wasn't a party bus, but the side of it did look like a party with it's squiggly yellow lettering and the bright red headphones they handed us to listen to the tour of the city made. They made me feel all bright and sunny. Although one of the Asian tours had neon green earphones, that would have made me equally happy. :) Man, I am having a rough time getting to the point today.

The bus drove us through ancient Rome revisiting the sights that we had photographed the night before in the dark. We drove past "The wedding cake" which is a huge museum all white WHITE marble that is atop a hill looking down the crooked street to the coliseum. This building and the 2 behind it were designed by Michealangelo and are stunning. We passed the coliseum and numerous round-a-bouts where the center was a fountain. The churches are old and beautiful. One looking as if it could topple. The first stop we got off at was a church, couldn't tell you the name though. Haha, I'm terrible. We went in and at the entrance there was a security guard that made me put on a paper shawl to cover my shoulders. It was again a hot day so I had on a tank top and I had to be covered. Some girls had to wear one on their waist to cover their legs. Out of respect for the church and for God we had to be covered or possibly be refused entry. At this church over 1,000 years ago it is said that there was a miracle and snow fell from the sky on August 5th. So we are just shy of 3 days away from this holiday that that celebrate by dropping millions of white flower pedals from the sky. Bummer. After walking through the church we made our way back on the bus and took it to the coliseum stop. It still looked as amazing as in the night however now was full of people. People everywhere! I'm happy I got pictures in the night when it was a ghost town. We walked through the ruins of what used to be the rich part of Rome and was now just ruins with some amazing churches that still stood the test of time. The houses and other small structures were now just blue prints of red brick in the ground. You can't help but wonder what it looked like in the day. Small brick houses covered in white concrete and as you'd come out of your front door in the morning you see the coliseum and tall pillared buildings all white and grand with size. Amazing. We didn't go through the coliseum, but we only had 2 days to sight-see and we didn't want to spend it in line. We hopped back on the bus and took the tour through the Vatican and then back around to "The Wedding Cake" and climbed the steps from the courtyard up to the roof of the building. We looked down and there was Rome. The ruins, the coliseum, the churches, Vatican hill. You could see the mountains dark and out of focus in the far distance and in the shade of the white marble we cooled down and just took in the city. The tour bus took us back through the city passed the chariot track where Ben Hir was filmed. A long oval track that is set alongside a hill in a ditch. There used to be stands surrounding it that held 4 x as many people as the coliseum. Tall trees line the park, their lower branches trimmed so there is just a tuft of branches with green at the top. They remind me of African safari trees only tall and skinny and they are all over the city.

We ended our tour with Gelato after getting off the bus at the station. As we sat at this outdoor mobile Gelato shop I couldn't help but wonder if the owners are secretly mafia... you have to worry about these things in Italy you know.