The Southams: July 23 Day...I can't remember!

It's 6am and Nathan and I are getting ready for ANOTHER tour! The look on Nathan's face says it all! "I'm going to kill you!" So far our tour experiences had not panned out so well. Sitting in a tour bus for hours on end, with a guide that repeats everything in 3 languages, and hanging out with some Europeans that smoke like chimneys and make us pull over every ten minutes for a ciggy, it wasn't exactly our idea of fun!

So today's tour was the Classical and Imperial Rome. I was super super excited for this one because it was the day we were going to see the Coliseum! Eek! We made it to the meeting point, by bus, of course. And met our guy. He was one cool dude; no really! That was the first great thing about this tour. Second, it was in only one language! Double yay! Finally, we were walking through Rome. No more being stuck on a cramped bus with a crazy driver for hours on end. It really ended up being a GREAT tour, although they did make us stop once at some stupid Vatican jewelry place to try and sell us a bunch of junk!

Well, we began our tour making our way over to Trevi Fountain! It was a little rainy outside, so on the way, we stopped and bought a pretty freaking awesome umbrella, which lasted up until a month or two ago when my little minions got a hold of it!

Throw a coin of your shoulder and make a wish!

After Trevi Fountain, we made our way over to the Parthenon. It was so amazing. If I remember correctly, it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, church/structure in Rome. I don't know. It's also the burial of Rafael and other famous artists.

The column on the left was and for Marcus Aurelius. The carvings on the side represent his victories in battle. On the right is an old Egyptian obelisk. Once again, if I remember correctly, Rome has more of Egypt's obelisks than Egypt!

The Parthenon!

So there was this guy on our tour. Poor dude seriously had a cigarette in his hand the ENTIRE time, and this was like a 10 hour long tour. I've never seen anything like it! It was almost funny seeing him pulling out his cigarettes. Nathan and I would look at each other and ask, "Is that ANOTHER one!"

Piazza Navona, hence the sign! I'm 97% sure this is where we saw a lady, with ripped clothes and half spray painted in red, peeing on the side of a building. No lie. She had a big hole in her pants so she didn't even have to take them down. She just leaned up against the wall and let loose! Ah, Europe!

Gelatohhhhh!!!

We also made a stop at St. Peters, and I did take a bunch of pictures again, but since I have already covered that in a previous post, I'll skip it this time!

Before we hit the Colosseum, we had a nice little lunch break during the tour and met up again to do the next half!

This time around we hopped on a bus. The bus took us up to Saint Peter's in Chains, an old cathedral, or maybe it was a basilica?, that supposedly holds the chains Peter was bound in at one point in his life. It's a sacred relic that many devout Christians pilgrimage to.

This is a statue of Moses sculpted by Michelangelo. Michelangelo liked to put his "signature" on all of his creations. If you pull up a larger picture, you can see the artists profile carved into Moses's beard! Fun fact of the day!

From St. Peter's we walked down to the Colosseum! One perk of booking a tour is that we did not have to wait in line to get in, and those lines are HUGE!