Cruise Day 5: Rome

Some of you may have wondered how we were going to go to Rome on our cruise when Rome is obviously not on the coast of Italy. Well, in addition to having less than 11 hours in port at Rome, we had to take a train from Civitavecchia to Rome, which takes about an hour and 15 minutes. So we woke up early, got off the boat as quick as possible and made it to Rome by 9:30 or so. We started at the Vatican, which was amazing. I must admit, I didn’t think I was going to be impressed since I’m not catholic. But I was completely wrong. We started at St Peters Basilica, climbed up to the top of the dome, which was hot and cramped, but the view was pretty cool.

Unfortunately you are not allowed to wear tank tops or short shorts, so I had to bring an extra shirt so as not to offend anyone with my wide shouldered tank top dress, and again, it was crazy hot outside. I think this is stupid because when you make your church a tourist site, you shouldn’t be able to claim that this is for respect. No, it is just to pretend like you are a real country (ok, I guess technically they are) and make people listen to you. It really wasn’t a huge deal, but the whole thing is just dumb so I wanted to point that out. This sign was pretty funny, because I may have been wearing a tank top, which I could easily cover up, but what happens if you only have 1 leg?!!:Back to the Vatican though, yeah, amazing. After we went to the top of St Peters Basilica, we went inside the church, which was huge and gorgeous. This is what happens when a Christian (me) walks through the church:
This is what happens when an atheist enters the church:
After that we went to the Vatican museum (which includes the Sistine Chapel). It was huge! We were in there for over an hour and weren’t even close to making it to the Sistine chapel, so we realized we had to pick up the pace if we wanted to see anything else in Rome that day. So hopefully we will back another time, with more time. The Sistine Chapel wasn’t what I expected, but interesting though. Blake took an illegal picture in there (shhh.. dont tell!):
We got done with the Vatican around 1:30 and we had to be back on the boat by 6:30, which we figured meant we had to catch a train by 4:30 or so. So we ran to the Spanish Steps. Realized there isn’t much to see there, but whatever there is to do there, we did it. Here I am eating some gelatti on the steps:
Then we ran to the Trevi Fountain, which was pretty awesome. We threw a coin in the fountain to make sure we will return to Rome (that is the legend). I had noticed people taking overly-exaggerated pictures (which, of course, I would never, ever do) of them throwing it over their shoulder, and I thought to myself that they were just being silly and I threw my coin straight in, but after talking with Stephanie (who lived there for a semester), it turns out you are supposed to throw it over your right shoulder. Opps. My bad.
After that we ran to the Coliseum. We didn’t have enough time to go in, so we just walked around it and saw the outside of the forum. If we ever come back (which after messing up the Trevi Fountain thing, we probably never will) we will have to make that more of a priority.
Next we hoped on a metro to get the main train station so that we could get back to the boat, and we got there earlier than we expected, and we didn’t bother looking up train times, so we figured we should buy some cheap wine for the boat. We took our time and found a cute little shop, and made our way back to the train station. When we got to the train station we noticed the board said that a train was leaving for Civitavecchia in a few minutes so we started running. Well, after running for over a quarter of a mile, I said to Blake that I couldn’t run anymore and we said we will just take the next train. As we got closer to the platform, we noticed the train was still there and made a mad-dash to the train, and basically threw ourselves on the train just as the doors were closing. It was pretty crowded but we finally found some seats near a Canadian family that was on our same cruise. They started telling us how they were panicking because they got lost and couldn’t find the train station and that if they hadn’t found this train in time, they would have had to catch a taxi for around 300 euros. Blake and I really had no idea that this was the last train that would have gotten us back to the boat on time! We were really lucky, not sure what we would have done if we hadn’t accidentally caught it!