love, lowry: Rome

Day 9

Rome

We had the morning free before our afternoon tour of the Vatican Museum. So we decided to trace a few steps of "Robert Langdon" from Dan Brown's, Angels & Demons! From our hotel we walked a short five minutes to one of the churches from the book! We then continued on to Santa Maria Maggiore, where the catholic church believes they have an actual piece of wood from Jesus' crib. After we enjoyed the beautiful church, we walked another ten minutes to San Pietro in Vincoli, St. Peter in chains. This is another church that is gorgeous. It houses Michelangelo's magnificent Moses, which dates back to 1515. It also has the chains that are said to have held Peter in Rome and Jerusalem. When we were there, we saw a huge group of worshipers that were touring and they started singing in Latin, right in front of the chains. I didn't understand what they were saying, but it was a little scary to me(in a none offensive way). We then made our way over to the Vittorio Emanuele II monument, passing the colosseum and forum on the way. We snapped some shots, enjoyed the view and then headed to the Vatican for our tour! The Vatican Museum is HUGE! I could spend a whole day there and still not see it all! I've done a tour of the museum at least four times and I always learn something new. The great thing about our tour guide, was that he didn't just stop at all the major things, he showed and explained so many other neat things too! Of course the Sistine Chapel is AMAZING! It is so crazy how much effort was put into all the artwork and buildings back then. We ended the night with an excellent dinner and gelato at the Trevi Fountain.....seriously, we are some blessed peeps!