Buongiorno from Rome!

We were fortunate to get to spend the last four days visiting Rome. A friend of ours here in Brussels even offered to keep Paije for us while we went. We were sorely tempted but in the end decided we just couldn't live without her cute face for that long. So we all boarded the plane together and flew the short two hours from Brussels to Rome. Here is Paije enjoying the view from the plane. Actually she was pretty into her toys the whole time.

Day #1:

When we arrived in Rome it took us forever to track down our luggage. Go figure, right? Usually that isn't too complicated. Well for a variety of reasons (many of which I am still annoyed about) we spent nearly two hours just getting out of the airport. By the time we arrived at our hotel we were all a little cranky and hungry. Believe it or not we actually ate at McDonald's our first night in Italy. Embarrassing huh. But it was next door to our hotel and seemed like the simplest option after a hectic arrival. The staff at the hotel was great and Paije was instantly the star of the place. By the end of the trip everyone seemed to know her name and would greet her as we came and went. It was really cute.

Day #2:

This trip with Paije taught me how helpful babies can be in getting you out the door early for some sightseeing. Paije was wide awake by 6:30am which meant we were ready to go by 9am. I imagine that if she hadn't been with us we likely would have slept in until after 9am. I guess we have Paije to thank for helping get to see everything that we did. Our first stop was the Vatican. We visited this famous building (Castel St. Angelo) next to the Vatican first. Perhaps you remember it from Angels and Demons if you saw the movie. It was pretty cool. During its two thousand year history it had been used as a palace, prison, and refuge for popes and emperors.

The view from the top was amazing. Here we are overlooking St. Peters church at the Vatican.

Paije wasn't too interested in this place. She slept the whole time we walked through it.

Here is a view again from the top.

The structure sits right along theTiber River.

Next we walked around St. Peter's basilica which really is as amazing as they say. Do you think he really was buried there? Rick Steves (Our faithful tour guide) says, "definitely, maybe." That afternoon I went on a tour of the Vatican museum and saw the Sistine Chapel. Ben sat outside with Paije since he had already seen it before and the tour was pretty expensive. That evening we walked around the city. Of course it had to rain on us. Thankfully Paije didn't seem to mind the weather.

We saw lots of yummy gelato places like this one.

Day #3

Here is a picture of Paije that morning. Hard to say what she had on her mind at the time.

First stop was the Colosseum...in the pouring rain. But thankfully there were no lines and it wasn't hot. Both of which I hear are big issues if you visit in the summer. So we were grateful to have the place and the cool breeze mostly to ourselves.


Next stop was the Roman Forum...and yes it was still raining. Ben and I huddled close together and listened to Rick Steves audio tour on my ipod. It definitely made the whole thing a lot more interesting to know the history. Rome must have been an amazing place two thousand years ago.


Day #4

Hallelujah it was sunny. The weather went from the worst kinda ugly to the best kinda beautiful. We spent all of Day number 4 walking around the city and saw some of the same sites for a second time. The air was warm and it just felt like everyone was in a good mood out walking around. We sat by the Trevi fountain and fed Paije.

That evening, right as the sun was heading down, we climbed up to the top of St. Peter's. Amazing and scary all at the same time.

This was the scene by the time we got home that day. We had literally walked non stop from 9am-6pm. Ben had even carried Paije all day long. What a good dad.

Day #5

We didn't have much time this morning since our flight left in the afternoon so we decided to go on a short walk. We ended up stumbling across a really important church that use to be the headquarters for the Catholic church before St. Peter's was built. The church is still really important today because it has this "throne" type chair that the new pope must sit on in order to officially become the pope. It had beautiful mosaics in it that we built over a thousand years ago.

Rome was really a cool place. Somewhere I've always wanted to visit and it definitely exceeded all my expectations.