Day 17 : Home? NOPE! Rome!

This morning we were all very glad that our hostel was so close to the train station. In typical fashion, we were running slightly behind schedule. Only slightly, it's not like we missed our train or anything… we made it just in time. The train from Venice to Rome was only about 4 hours and lucky for me it had outlets! Those of you that know me, know that I have quite a lot of trouble with motion sickness, so far on this trip I've been lucky and not had any issues with typing or reading on trains. Apparently doing schoolwork is another story.

While I really am trying to use these train rides to get caught up on school work or blogging/photo editing I find staring at a screen working on tiny details REALLY gets to me. Can someone write me a school excuse for motion sickness? Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Sincerely, Tiff's stomach.

Once we arrived in Rome we decided that the directions to our hostel were extremely confusing, so we just took a cab. I'm confident we could have figured it out on our own, but it was about 42 degrees out and none of us were in the mood to wonder around the city trying to find out hostel. We stayed in a great hostel that was for women only. It was nice and clean and, being Canadians, we took to leaving our computers laying around while we were in the hostel. A great place to stay and I recommend it to anyone traveling to Rome. It's in Trastevere, which is a perfect location for those who want to walk to most of the main attractions.

After getting settled in our hostel we headed out at a brisk pace to get to the Vatican. Our first stop was the Vatican Museum to see… what else?

The Sistine Chapel! There were some amazing sculptures and really interesting things housed there, but we were really mostly there just to get to the chapel. In the process of getting through this day, I may have tripped an old lady, gotten yelled at for taking the above picture and made LOTS of Pope jokes. I'm glad I'm not a Catholic or else my fate would be sealed. Unfortunately I didn't see Tom Hanks running around anywhere looking for secrets. Nor did I see Edward or Bella. I did see :

some cool Roman sculptures,

amazing architecture,

a real mummy,

a friendly puppy

and a ceiling full of paintings.

So I guess it evens out.

Since we didn't have any celeb sightings we decided the next best thing would be to hang out at St. Peter's Basilica before it closed. Knowing the dress code (this time) we all got in without any trouble. To say it is amazing inside is an understatement. It's so ornately designed without being gaudy (however it is really God-y! HA! get it?! Yes my jokes are lame). We wandered around inside for a little bit, but then decided that we wanted to climb to the top of the Basilica. So up we went!

On the way up, we got a closer look at some of "paintings" that I'd seen at the top of the dome on the way in. Turns out, they aren't paintings at all. They are all tiny mosaic tiles. Impressive.

Photo credit to Christie, who climbed up on a tiny sort of 1/2 seat thing at the very top of the Basilica to get this shot. As you can see, it's around 6:15/6:20 according to the giant sun dial type fountain in the centre of the square. Just a warning for those of you that are claustrophobic, or get dizzy easily. Tiny stairs, in a tight, straight upwards spiral are what await you on this climb to the top. At least they give you a rope to hold onto when you're climbing up. Yikes!

Such a long day! We decided to eat close to the hostel in Trastevere and found a great spot. Since I'm in Italy I figured why not have a Caprese salad. So that's just what I did. Delicious! That's the end of my day.