After Sorrento and the Amalfi coast: ROME! There was an incredible amount of museums, monuments, buildings, and piazzas to see; we ended up adding an extra night's stay to our time in Rome. We found it to be incredibly touristy, to the point where it felt like we were in a museum. The hunt for good food continued in Rome. We had pizza by the slice from a little take-out place that was miles better (and half the price) than a tourist-guide-recommended pizza restaurant--how frustrating and disappointing! The kick in the nuts was that this restaurant was recommended to us by a couchsurfer in Rome (ie. a local!), but the only Italian people in the restaurant were the staff! Our quest for yummy goodness was so unfruitful that we dreaded dinner time every night: €2 pizza by-the-slice that is probably very yummy, or possibly not-so-yummy €10+ sit-down meal? Needless to say we have never eaten this much pizza in our lives!
And just a warning...this post is GIANT!! So get comfy, get some popcorn and a coke, and enjoy!
First stop: the Vatican museum! This is a view of the interior courtyard, named the Cortile del Belvedere (Belvedere Courtyard).
Here's the famous statue "Laocoön and His Sons" in the Vatican courtyard.
Random, really cool column in the Vatican. Looks like compact bacon! It was a beautifully carved column; notice the intricate work on the "rings" around the base.
An awesome painted ceiling showing off the "trompe l'oeil" technique! It may look like sculpting but that's actually all flat!
Another very cool ceiling.
In the Vatican museum they have some contemporary art. Here is a Dalí painting.
And here is the main reason we paid to go to the Vatican museum: The Sistine Chapel. It's at the end of the entire museum after they make you walk through everything else. Apparently you weren't allowed to take photos, and the security guards were like boot camp sergeants! They yelled at anyone taking photos, but by that time we had already taken a few snaps.
Also in the Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.
A view from a terrace in the Vatican museum.
In the museum, this is the very cool staircase you go down to exit. Notice that it's actually two staircases that start opposite one another.
Stefan in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City.
St. Peter's Basilica.
Here is a view of the square from the basilica.
We thought the garb that the guards at the Vatican were in was very cool, and Stefan tried to get a photo next to a guard. But apparently you can't stand right next to them, lest they yell at you in unintelligible Italian (complete with gesticulations)!
Inside the basilica. Check out the shafts of light... downright heavenly, no? :P
A shot of the altar under the dome.
Bernini's "Cathedra Petri" and "Gloria" in the basilica.
An amazing shot of the altar and the dome!
One of the many bridges in Rome. This one is the Ponte del Umberto I, named after the second king of Italy.
Piazza Navona, where we were caught in the rain with no umbrella!
Piazza Venezia, which is home to...
...a gargantuan monument to Victor Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy.
Here is another shot of the monument, just after rainfall. We like the rainbow on the left!
Yet another view of the Piazza Venezia.
Piazza del Popolo, which has an Egyptian obelisk as well as twin churches.
The Spanish Steps!
The Pantheon. It seems like wherever we go, landmarks are under renovation. We have deemed our travel time "The Restoration Period". Ha! (Wasn't that done a long time ago already?)
Inside the Pantheon, where the sunlight is shining through the skylight.
Trevi Fountain. Yes, that building you see here is actually part of a fountain!
A shot of the more fountain-y part.
We thought skinny dipping in the fountain was slightly inappropriate (though in our defense it was ridiculously hot that day), so we did the next best thing: dip our hands in!
We came across some big building called the Colosseum!
Two more views of the Colosseum.
A shot of the interior. The maze-like structure you see were actually the corridors underneath the floor. You can see in the centre of the photo they have reconstructed a part of the floor to show you what it would have looked like.
The Colosseum's not all that big--Stefan can hold it with his two hands! He then proceeded to toss the building away into outer space! Anything you hear to the contrary is rubbish!
An Arc de Triomphe next to the Colosseum. Luckily this photo was taken mere seconds before Stefan did away with the Colosseum!
We are now in the Roman Forum, which is very close to the Colosseum. Here is a stadium that is situated at one end of the forum.
A shot of the forum. As you can see it is sprawling and has many different ruins!
Another view of the forum!
A set of columns in the forum. Don't ask us which temple it was originally part of! Is it the gates of some Roman Heaven?!
Broccoli cow?! Toronto had its moose, and Rome has its cows. These were all over the city!
Leetle tiny pineapples!
A grilled veggie and cheese panini. Mmmm!
Gelato!! This is gelato from a gelateria called San Crispino. We can't remember how we found out about this place but it's apparently the place to go for gelato in Rome! Unlike most gelato places, where you can see the gelato in all its mound-y goodness, this place has it all covered up! They also only serve their gelato in cups. The server was very much like the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld! The place was very quiet, and you apparently had to make your decision very fast! We were quietly discussing our choice and somehow the server had superman hearing and would speak up loudly and say what ever flavour he last heard us say! In the end, we got honey and ginger-cinnamon. A lot of the flavours there were unusual, so we went for something unusual! It was really good gelato, but the flavours we had were not ones we would want to get all the time. It was the kind of good where you really enjoyed the different taste, as something new, but it wasn't a taste you fell in love with!
Our first good pasta and sit down meal in Italy! Yay!!! We found this place on some side street that was pretty much closed down because they were redoing the road. We were pretty hungry, but when we found the restaurant they weren't opened...we had to wait about an hour for them to open, and were the first ones seated! This was our second encounter of an Italian restaurant that was playing Mexican music! Because our luck with food was so bad in Italy, this made us nervous...were we gonna get tacos or pasta?!
The food above is what Cliff had...tagliolini con spigola e bottariga (tagliolini with sea bass and dried egg). Stefan thought it tasted slightly Asian...Cliff had no idea what he was talking about! But either way Cliff really liked it! Especially after such a long "good-sit-down" drought!
Stefan's meal: big ravioli stuffed with ricotta and swiss chard in a tomato-and-parmesan sauce. It was very simple but extremely tasty!
OH MY GOD. We found these shops in Rome called Castroni, which sold many different gourmet foods: pastas, sauces, wines, snacks, and tons of CHOCOLATE!!! Pictured above is €4.50 100g white chocolate with pulverized mint leaves. By pulverized we mean instead of the chocolate being only mint flavoured it had actual crushed mint leaves! Amazing! It was the most delicious (and most expensive) chocolate bar we've ever eaten!
We also found something very hard to find in Italy (and in the Mediterranean) at these Castroni stores: PEANUT BUTTER! We got irrationally excited when we saw jars of good ole PB! It wasn't the tastiest peanut butter ever but it was sure the most expensive we've ever had!
