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