89. Florence

We spent one full day in Florence, and we really got the most out of it.  The Duomo is SOOOO sweet, I couldn't stop staring at it.

This is the fake David.  We also saw the real one.

We all had sunburns from the day before.

87. Vatican

Wednesday in Rome is Pope day, and we were in Rome on a Wednesday!!  We sat out on the hard, sunburnt chairs set out in St. Peter's square and waited for our "audience" with Pope Benedict XVI.  I took a few photos as we sat out in the square with the sun beating on our backs.

Above is St. Peter's--this cathedral is SOOOOOOOO HUGE.  We went inside it later in the day.  You walk inside, and it takes you a minute to register just HOW big it is, but then you start thinking about it, and you realize it is one monster church.  Gorgeous though.  Below is the view behind me, lots of people want to see the pope on pope day.

So then eventually the Pope came out and rode around, on all the paths between sets of chairs.  It was really neat!  There was music playing, everyone was clapping, and the Pope was waving.  We were all standing on our chairs to get a good look.  I got terrible photos, but Krystle got a great one:

Isn't his sunhat so cute?!  I'm not Catholic (obviously) but I still thought it was really cool to see the Pope in real life.  After he drove around he went up to the front of the cathedral and sat down to give his blessing.  Before the blessing a bunch of other people said stuff....and repeated it in five languages...so we decided to go meet back with our group to tour the Vatican Museum (and see the Sistine Chapel).

Our tour was really neat.  We focused on the works of Michaelangelo and what inspired him (you have to focus on something in the museum, otherwise it is just madness).

This statue was one of Michelangelo's fave's.  Or so they say.

The Vatican Museum is just HUGE.  It goes on and on, and has all sorts of amazing things.  I was really glad we had a tour guide though, because I would have gotten lost (and bored) if I hadn't had someone pointing out all the cool stuff.  Oh PS our tour guide was THE CUTEST thing.  We never figured out where she was from, but she was adorable.  She always referred to us as the seven girls.

On our tour of the Vatican Museum we saw Raphael's School of Athens.  I've seen this painting in countless books (including American Heritage), and it was very neat to see the original.  This guy here is my man Euclid.  Love that guy.

You aren't allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I didn't take any of it, but it was incredible.  I cannot believe that it was done by a person laying down getting paint in his eyes.  I recommend seeing it if you ever find yourself in Rome.

86. Pantheon

Our second day in Rome we decided to go to the Pantheon.  We also had our suits on to go to the beach, but then it started raining...story of my summer.

The Pantheon is beautiful.  It was built by the Romans as a temple to their many Gods, but has since been obtained by the Catholic Church (ironic). 

Isn't it gorgeous?

Except for the scaffolding?  ALSO the story of my summer...scaffolding.  It's like Europe thinks it is a good way to decorate the outside of buildings or something.  

The neat thing about Rome is that you can just wander a few blocks (if that) and find something gorgeous and thousands of years old.  Seriously, no matter where you are, you will find something.  You can be driving down the road and you will just see columns left over from a temple or old roman marketplace.  It is crazy.  Below is a church we discovered after wandering around the Pantheon area.

The sun eventually came out and we decided we would try to figure out how to get to the beaches of Rome.  It wasn't TOO complicated, but it was cloudy :(.  That volcano in Iceland has GOT to stop disrupting the weather (that is our hypothesis to why it just keeps raining and raining and raining).

85. Roma

After a rather lengthly blogging break, I am back to posting photos (I'm still shooting for five a day).  However, before that, I have some catching up to do.  Like I said, I went to Italy for 10 days with some of the most wonderful people at BYU.  IT WAS FABULOUS.  Seriously, best summer vacation ever.

Our first stop was Rome.  We took a night train from Vienna to Rome on a Sunday evening.  Let me tell you--a night train does not mean a sleeping train.  We tried all laying down in our compartment, but there were just WAY too many feet in my face, so I went and slept with some strangers.  Once I did that I was able to get some zzz's.

Once we arrived and took care of some logistics and planning stuff, we went to the Colosseum.  It was incredible!  Do you know it took them like seven years to build it?  It is crazy what slave labor accomplished back in those days.

The romans love the trees shown in the photograph below.  They call them pine trees....yeah, I was confused too.  They like them because they can plant a bunch of them together and make a big umbrella of shade.  Italy gets warm--not for us, of course because its just been a freak summer--but usually the shade is quite welcome.  I think they look neat.

We went on an actual tour of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, just so we could understand things a little better (and not be like, "Hey look...some old stuff!!").  It was super interesting.  Below is a church that is standing in the Roman forum.  The six lovely ladies were my travel companions: Krystle, Ambree, Maria, Jana, Kayla, Whitney.

Can you believe that people in Rome just drive past this on their way to work every day??  It is unbelievable to me!

That night we went to the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain (and ate gelato-naturally).  We all threw coins into the water at the same time.  I learned later that you are supposed to throw in TWO coins, one of which is to guarantee your return to Rome someday.  I think I'm just going to make that happen anyway.  I could have spent a lot more time in this city.

It was a perfect first day in Italy.

74. Painted

Last week a few of us went to Innsbruck, Austria.  I want to live there.  Every house and building is picture perfect.  The residents are not afraid to use color.  

This building was right by our hotel.  I fell in love with it.

Notice how no two buildings have the same color on this street.

They also aren't afraid of window boxes.  In fact, they love them.  I want one.

This is the main street in Innsbruck, doesn't it have personality??

Looking down the River Inn (the other direction than the photo above).  Everything in this town is set against the most amazing mountain backdrops (in every direction).  Like I said, I want to live here.

61. Brothel

Hostel sounds like brothel. I have always thought that.  The fact that hostels have a reputation of a lot of sex and alcohol doesn't help the phonetic resemblance.  On top of that, as we were walking to our hostel late on Wednesday night, we saw two prostitutes working a street corner.  That was somewhat disconcerting.

Lucky our hostel PurPur-Crib 15 ended up being nothing like a brothel.  It was just very IKEA, which explained the sad excuse of a mattress I slept on for three nights.

Overall, this hostel was a nice place to stay, considering it was only $40 for three nights. 

On our first day in Prague we spent time in Old Town Square, and then went on a fabulous FREE walking tour.  Czech history is FASCINATING.  Seriously, I enjoyed every minute of it.  They have played a very interesting part in European history, especially in the past two hundred years.  Below is the astronomical clock, a famous landmark in Prague.  It is gorgeous, and has it's own interesting history.  Unfortunately, the little men that move on the hour (they represent vanity, greed, etc) reminded me of the hokey rides at Disneyland (primarily Pirates of the Caribbean).  Just another way that Disney has ruined my life.

Interesting thing about this clock: after the clock was finished, the ruler at the time didn't want its inventor duplicating the clock for any other empire, so he had the clock-maker's eyes gouged out.  The clock-maker, obviously angry, committed suicide by throwing himself into the gears of the clock.  His lodged body broke the clock, and it didn't work 100 years after that.  Interesting revenge.

Below is our tour guide Justin in St. Wenceslas Square.  He really did a great job.  He talked like someone that snowboards or surfs a lot, but his ability to recite Czech history for 3.5 hours was quite impressive.  I now know more about Prague than I do about Vienna.  We all agreed it would be a good idea to find a similar tour in Vienna so we can actually figure out more about the city we live in.