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.