Dear Mom and Dad,: July 2019

31 July 2019

Guided Tours Galore

Dear Mom and Dad,

Today was our guided tour day. We basically did tours from 9:30 to 5:30. That's a lot of walking, spending time in the sun and receiving information overload. It was well worth it! I highly recommend paying for the tours. Not only do you get to ask questions, learn from the local experts, but you also get to skip the lines. I bet people spent hours waiting in line for the Vatican, St Peter's, Sistine Chapel, and the Colossium. Get ready for picture overload as I took a picture of everything. Again, I'll do my best to explain most of the pictures but and oral explanation will be better upon my arrival.

Meet Hopper. This is our green electric scooter that we rented for the day, so we could tour all over Rome. It was 40 euros to rent and well worth the money. Michael did a great job driving me in the busy city. We only went down the wrong way once, and not for very long.

We liked parking our hog next to the other scooters. Ours was the smallest and struggled to get us upcharge hills. I think we topped her out at 40 km a hour. That's about 25 miles a hour. Also, take note I convinced Mike to wear our matching souvenir shirts.

Our first stop was the Vatican. We were able to ask our tour guide what the round castle was nearby. (Pictures of the Castle of Saint Angelo are in my previous post.) It was a fortress used for the Pope to escape the Vatican through an underground tunnel if it was ever under attack. That's pretty cool. The Vatican is a city-state located in Rome. This means it isn't technically part of Italy, which also means they don't have to pay taxes.

The first two pictures are inside the Vatican. The building is Saint Peter's. The Pope lives in the building on the right. He does a blessing every Sunday outside his window.

This fountain is in the Vatican grounds. The water is said to be blessed and one of the purest. Honestly, all over Europe they have fountains with water for the public to use. People say it's one of two free things still: water and air. It was wonderful.

Spy the people in the background. They were from Texas and quickly became our friends. We had so much fun touring with them.

The amount of people everywhere was overwhelming. We were grateful to have pur guide and jump past them. The dome in the background has 535 steps and we climbed it later on the tour. Pictures to follow in a later post. The garden on the left is the Pope's private garden. I'll have an arial view of that later as well.

Get ready for a ton of museum pics. I'm going to have to make this a two or three part post as we saw so many things that it wont all fit into one post.

Our first stop was visiting the Vatican museum. Rome is the oldest existing city, so you can imagine how many artifacts are located in this church.

A couple of Roman goddesses.

And a couple of Roman slaves.

This was the first letter ever mailed.

Our tour guide was so sassy. She had a stuffed cat and would yell "follow the pussy cat" if anyone wasn't keeping up in the group.

FOLLOW THE PUSSY CAT!!!

The Roman's spent a lot of time in bath houses. It was viewed as a social activity. Some could hold 5,000 people. Many times people would chat, read books, and catch up on the news.

He's having so much fun.

This sculpture inspired Michael Angelo's depiction of Jesus in the Sistine Chapel.

The internet sucks in Croatia, so I'm going to try again later with more pics. I need to finish the museum pics, Saint Peter's Basilicia, the Sistine Chapel (no cameras were allowed so we only snuck one), the Colussium, and ones that we are starting to take today in Croatia.

Split is beautiful. It's like the European's version if Mexico. Not that it's cheap by any means but the beach laid back vibe. Tomorrow we are going on a 9 hour tour that includes, boating, waterfalls, national park, hiking, and my fav.....wine tasting.

I'll continue to update as I have time.

Love,

The beach bums

30 July 2019

When in Rome

Dear Mom and Dad,

We are so enjoying Rome. We are also enjoying the phrase "when in Rome" as we are actually here!

These pictures are a little out of order but I'm not spending the time to organize them from a phone. Blogging would be so much easier if I had my computer. Oh well, my five followers probably don't mind.

These are pictures of our breakfast. Every night we fill out a card about what time and what exactly we want for breakfast. We are literally staying in the cutest place. I didn't particularly want my pic taken on this morning.

Before we could check into our hotel, I NEEDED to eat. Hangry was an understatement. I will never get sick of pizza and pasta while I'm here

It took forever to find our hotel. We wandered past this door and around the block like 15 times. You have to put in a code to get inside. The code is 6969. Then you have to put in another code, 3535e, to get into the second door where to "office" is. Our place is literally three rooms for rent.

The bathroom has two toilets. We can't figure what the second one is. Our best guess is a place to wash your feet. The shower has 5 different setting for how the water comes out. My favorite is the rain water one.

Michael checking out the refrigerator because he loves cold water and hasn't had it all trip. We have a 1 liter soft water bottle that has been used so much. We just fill that and never gave to pay for water.

Views from our window.im not sure what historical site this is but its pretty cool to watch it and see the tourists that come with their maps and take pics right in our backyard.

Breakfast menu. We just check the boxes that we want. Our first morning, we basically checked every box.

We have to keep snacks in the room as this one also gets hangry. We have a fridge so a meat, cheese, and cracker tray was an easy pick.

Homemade pasta is life. Ravioli and bacon carbonara for the win.

Again, this round of pictures is out of order. It happens when I upload a bunch at a time. Anyways, we did take a break from our carb overload for some sushi. Michael, making fun of him. He's hilarious.

This is the castle of Saint Angelo. I read that they used to do public hangings here.

My modeling career is going to take off with some of these pics. Definitely, need to add to the portfolio.

This is inside. We didn't actually pay to go all the way in since our big paid tour is going to happen today. We are paying $50 each to go into the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Saint Peter's with a guide and skipping the lines.

This male street musician killed it. He played all of Lady Gaga's songs in Ted stilettos.

Idk what this building is but it looked cool.

The outside of Castle Saint Angelo.

We needed to stop for another food break. My first bite of my pasta, I dropped a noodle in Mike's beer. Whoops.

Photo evidence of me being right. All Michael wanted was a salad, and I emphasized that there wouldn't be lettuce in what he ordered because my mom and I made the exact same mistake in Greece. He KNEW there would be because it was under the "salad" section. Man I hate being right.