It's never too late for Rome.

Well, so much for being prompt about finishing the blog, but better late than never I guess.  Why now you ask?  Well Sharon and I made a deal that if I got to keep the laptop while she was in Chicago for two weeks (to play video games while I'm in Seattle), I'd finish up the blog.  So here we go...

So we last left off on the island of Naxos in Greece.  We had to take a ferry from Naxos to Athens to catch our plane to Rome that afternoon.  Unfortunately our ferry came into Athens about 2 hours late, and we only had about an hour and a half until our plane was taking off.  With the airport a good forty minute ride away, we were starting to get pretty stressed out.  We hurried off the ferry and got into a pretty long cab line which took about 10 minutes to get through.  We get in our cab and started pleading with the driver to drive as fast as he could to get to the airport.  He said he would do his best, but when we told him when our flight was, he wasn't too optimistic about our chances.  It took about 15-20 minutes just to get out of the parking lot of the ferry terminal, but once we hit the highway the driver went to work.  He must have been going above 90 mph most of the way zigging and zagging through traffic.  Sharon had to close her eyes most of the way she was so scared.  With her eyes closed (thank goodness) I proceeded to watch the driver roll a cigarette with both hands while using his knee to continue weaving through traffic.  I was as much scared as I was amazed by this.  We got to the airport with about 40 minutes to spare, made sure to kiss the ground as we left the cab, rushed through security, and just made our flight with only a few minutes to spare.  And on to Rome we went...

We got into Rome fairly late that night, so we just checked into our guest house and went down the street for some Italian food.  I think I had set my expectations too high for what the Italian food was going to taste like it Italy.  It was good but I definitely wasn't blown away.

The next day we walked all over the city.  Early in the day, we came across a familiar sight from our recent travels...another Egyptian obelisk.

We meet again Mr. Obelisk.

 We soon turned down a street a got our first view of the Colosseum.

Throughout our time in Rome I think I probably took close to a hundred pictures of the Colosseum, and I'll share a few more with you later, but now we'll move on to something more important.  Lunch.  Sharon had done her research of course and had found this great little porchetta place that she wanted to us to check out.  It took a while to find it, but it was definitely worth it.  The porchetta was delicious.  We each had a sandwich to start, and it was sooooo good, we ordered another order of porchetta for the two of us.

A very happy Sharon after a delicious porchetta lunch.

Porchetta.  Yummy.

After lunch, we continued our self-directed walking tour of Rome.  Here are some of the highlights:

I don't think we'll ever be this tanned again.

"Itsa meeeee, Mario!"

"Hehe."

More delicious meat at dinner.

Sharon posing in front of the Colosseum.

On our second and last full day in Rome we had a busy day planned.  We slept in a bit as usual, and then made our way to Vatican City to visit the museum, and then St. Peter's Basilica.  After the Vatican, we made our way to the colusseum for a night-time tour thanks to my brilliant wife who was had done her research and was able to secure us last second tickets to this very popular attraction.  It was definitely the highlight of Rome for me.  Here are some pics from our second day in Rome:

The ceilings were definitely the highlights of the museum.

Beautiful wife.  Beautiful ceiling.

Waiting in line in St. Peter's Square.

St. Peter's Basilica.  Breathtaking.

Ted: "I need to get myself an outfit like that."

"Mr. Obelisk, you sure do get around."

Some well-deserved wine after a long, hot day at the Vatican.

The Colosseum at sunset.

Waiting inside the Colosseum for our tour to start.

Walking out into the arena.

Underneath the arena.

The view from the gallery.

Cheering Maximus on.

The pic my mature wife took of the sticker she stuck on my butt.

After our tour of the colosseum, we walked back to our guest house.  We had walked a ton that day, and unfortunately Sharon wasn't wearing the most comfortable footwear, so it was a long, slightly whine-filled walk back, but props to my wife for toughing it out.  I also have to point out she won our game of who could best estimate the number of steps back to the hotel.  Counting the number of steps back was a good way to keep her mind off the pain;)

So that was it for Rome.  Our next stop was Croatia, which was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.  Stay tuned...