Sunday, January 14, 2007

Rome, Italy

ROMA, ROMA, ROMA Bellisimo!!! We arrived in Rome, Italy on New Years Eve. We went to our hotel and then straight to a huge Italian dinner as you can see in the above picture. There was even an opera singer on hand to serenade us all through out the meal. The restaurant we went to happened to be next to the Vatican so we rushed to see it once dinner was over. Here is Orlando in front of St. Peter's Basilica.

Here are some pictures inside the Basilica (taken on New Year's Day):


I can't even begin to explain how breathtaking the Basilica was, every where you looked there was a painting or an amazing sculpture, even the roof was amazing. I felt like I had attention deficit disorder my eyes could not concentrate on one thing!!!
We continued walking toward the Piazza del Popoloma Rome where the New year's eve countdown occurs. The only problem is that there were about 5 million people in town that day all going toward the same place!!! As you can see on the picture on the right. Everyone had champagne on hand for the big countdown. Once 2007 hit everyone opened their bottles and proceeded to soak us completely with it!!! it was crazy all I could see was lights (from the fireworks) and champagne falling on me!!! It was truly a crazy experience. Once the celebration had ended everyone was trying to walk back to the bus. The problem was that the mob of people where all going the same way. At one point I said to Orlando and the other Puerto Ricans "Ok no matter what happens hold on and stay together". So we navigated through the crowd and made it back to the bus on time. Thank God because some of the people who missed it had to pay a taxi $150 Euros ($194 US dollars) to get back to the hotel!!!

The next day we walked for 8 hours straight all over Rome. We visited the Colosseum first.


Peace out at the Roman Ruins.

Here we are at the Trevi Fountain:

Gelato!!!! MMmmmm

Here we are inside the Vatican Museum:



We also got a chance to see the Sistine Chapel (you can't take pictures inside) which ceiling was painted by some dude called Michelangelo (not the Ninja Turtle) maybe you have heard of him. Rome was definitely our favorite city of the whole trip.





1 comment:

Unknown said...

New Years sounds awesome! Champagne and a bunch of total strangers, what else do you need?
$200 for a cab? Ouch!