Arriving in Rome was a little bittersweet for us. As the last of our six incredible locations, we couldn’t help but feel a little sad when we got there. It definitely felt like a big, modern city with crowded streets, endless tourists and lots of traffic jams. On the plus side though, it’s landmarks were nothing short of impressive. There’s a strange duality to a place where you can walk down a street with an “H&M” on the corner and on the other side there are ancient ruins of Roman buildings. You can probably guess where we made our first stop.  The most iconic of all Italian destinations – the Colosseum! It was every bit as formidable as we’d imagined. Watching the sunset together from inside it’s incredible, decaying walls felt about as surreal as it gets.

Miss a stop on our Italian Adventure? Catch up here!
Intro | Positano | Isle of Capri | Florence | Sienna | Venice | Rome

I realize this sounds a little ridiculous, but we walked for about an hour in search of this little restaurant called Canova . . . all because they made reference to it in the episode of “Friends.” (It’s the one where super rich “Pete-Dakota” takes Monica on a date to Italy for pizza.) As it turned out, we would encounter another odd piece of American culture while we were there having pasta on the patio. As we ate, a mob of people gathered in front of the hotel next door. It wasn’t until we heard them chanting “Beiber! Beiber! We love you Justin” that we realized who was staying there. We didn’t have an actual “Bieber” sighting, but just being around the chaos was plenty memorable for us.

The Pantheon was one of our favorite landmarks. We were lucky enough to have anniversary photos taken while we were in Rome and it’s tremendous columns and unique architecture were the backdrop for many of them. Such a cool place! Thanks to a Rick Steves audio tour we learned all about  it’s incredible history and significance to the Roman culture. 

The Vatican was extremely crowded so it was slow going, but we did manage to see the Sistine Chapel. (And only narrowly avoided getting yelled at for trying to take a rather unsuccessful iPhone selfie inside.)

Is it bad that our favorite part of the Vatican was the pillars in the main courtyard. Such a fun place to take photos! Love those leading lines and stunning white marble.
We enjoyed exploring the Castel Sant’Angelo and taking in the beautiful views of the city and Tiber River. Learning about these ancient places was so fascinating. Each of the angels that line the bridge to the Castel hold an object that references the Crucifixion of Christ – the cross, nails, bloody rag, etc. So much thought and symbolism put into every detail!

The round roof of the Pantheon looked so strange peaking out among all the other sharp edged Roman buildings.

Roman Holiday fans will recognize this face! Ever since seeing that charming scene in Audrey Hepburn’s 1950’s classic film, meeting the “Bocca della Verità” (Mouth of Truth) has been on my bucket list.  Legend has it that if you stick your hand in it’s mouth it will bite off your fingers if you are lying. Unfortunately for us, what we didn’t know before our visit was that the “Mouth” is attached to the side of a church, behind big iron gates and it has visiting hours. We got there about 15 minutes too late to test our honesty, but at least we still got to see him and snap a few shots through the fence.

This was the last photo I took on my iPhone as we were getting into a cab on our way to the airport. I never wanted to forget what it felt like to walk on those cobblestone streets.Ciao Italy! You gave us an adventure we’ll never forgot!

Miss a stop on our Italian Adventure? Catch up here!
Intro | Positano | Isle of Capri | Florence | Sienna | Venice | Rome