Rome. (Part 1)

In my last post 3 weeks ago I talked about the amazing opportunity I had to go to the beautiful city of Rome with some of my family.

Well, now that I have been back for 2 weeks, I feel it is time to post about it.

(It's been a super crazy 2 weeks.)

Anyways, the adventure started really days before I even left.

Things were crazy getting me packed to leave the country and Olivia packed to spend a week with ma.

But we did it!

Wednesday morning Michael dropped Olivia and I off at the LAX airport.

It is such a busy airport so the drop off seriously happened in a matter of seconds, leaving no time for tears.

Don't worry they came later.

Olivia and I ate lunch and hopped on our short flight to SLC.

She was an angel until the very last 10 minutes of the flight when we were descending.

She was definitely mad about having to turn her DVD player off and I don't think she liked the feeling of going down cause she started freaking out.

If it weren't for my crazy bad motion sickness I would have been totally fine with this but within 2 minutes of the freak out I was literally holding on to her while she was screaming and flailing her arms about meanwhile dry heaving into the convenient barf bag.

Thank you Delta.

It was awful to say the least.

But we made it.

We had to wait at the airport for a while because my mom was running behind.

Usually this would be no big deal but it gave me a little too much quiet time to think about what I was about to do.

Leave my precious girl for almost 6 days.

So, I started bawling right in the middle of the airport.

And we aren't talking just a few streaming tears, it was the full on mascara running down your face kind of sobbing.

After about an hour of this my mom, the twins, and Harrison finally arrived.

Olivia completely flipped out with excitement. 

(It had been 3 weeks since she had seen them.)

Emerson and I had to quickly check in our baggage and head up to security.

So there wasn't a lot of time to talk.

I tried to hug baby girl but she wouldn't even let me touch her.

She was so very excited to be with the twins.

So I waved bye bye completely sobbing.

And seriously had the hardest time walking around the corner.

Emerson and I grabbed a little dinner and a few snacks since we would be on the plane for about 10 hours. 

(It was a direct flight to Paris.)

I drugged myself with 4 Ibuprofen, Sudafed, half a Phenergan and Dramamine.

(I had been congested and didn't want to take any chance of having my ears hurt.)

So I was drugged.

But not drugged enough to sleep great sadly.

I have the hardest time sleeping on planes.

The plane ride went fine.

I think I spent a little too much time thinking about how much I missed Michael and baby girl.

Alright moving on!

Wednesday May 2nd

 Here we are on the plane.

This was sometime in the middle of the night.

Oh just a little side note about planes.

An airplane bathroom has got to be in my top 5 scariest places to be.

Despite the fact that it is just gross how many people use them, when you flush them it is seriously so loud and it sucks the water out so fast I get scared I am going to get sucked out too.

I'm not even kidding.

But on a long flight like this it is nearly impossible not to use them.

So I was forced to use it twice and it was absolutely awful.

Oh and this might be so bad to say but I always get the weirdest urges to just jump out of the plane.

I have no idea what it is because I am not suicidal.

It is just the strangest feeling.

I really hope I am not the only one out there that feels this way.

Please someone be crazy with me.

Thursday May 3rd

We arrived at the Paris airport around noon their time. (3 am our time.)

We had a little bit of time there to find some yummy chocolate and these ginormous lollipops.

Our flight to Rome was a little under 2 hours.

When we got there we picked up our luggage and went outside to wait for my dad.

As we were sitting on the curb seriously half asleep this man whooshed past me and grabbed my backpack right in front of me.

Emerson immediately jumped up and started chasing him.

But, a short second later the man stopped and busted up laughing.

That man was my dad.

Oh my gosh, seriously my heart was beating so fast I very easily could have had a heart attack right then and there.

Holy cow.

Okay, so we got a taxi and drove about 1 hour to the apartment we were staying at.

Chris (my dad's business partner) and Sophia were there waiting for us.

It was seriously the cutest apartment ever.

There were 3 bedrooms, a big living room/dining room, a little sitting room, 2 bathrooms, and a kitchen.

Sophia and I unpacked, I tried to get myself to look somewhat decent, and then we were off to pick up some groceries.

Okay you might not be able to tell in this picture but the carts are so tiny.

And they are really hard to push because the wheels don't just move forward and back, they move side to side.

So Emerson mostly had to push it because we just weren't strong enough.

They had some of the most interesting foods.

I know I was seriously exhausted but as were were walking down the isles I was like, "seriously why do they sell so many different kinds of dog biscuits?"

Emerson and Sophia looked at me like I was the stupidest person ever and went on to tell me that they were different kinds of cookies and crackers.

Dumb moment #1 right there.

 Nutella is of course huge here. 

Literally.

 After picking up groceries we walked about half a mile up the street and got our very first view of the Colosseum.

It was amazing.

 Because we were all starving especially Emerson and I we stopped at a restaurant on a cute little street right next to the Colosseum.

Sophia and I had our first tastes of the famous Margherita pizza and Bruschetta.

It was really good.

One weird thing about the restaurants is you can't have water for free.

You have to buy big bottles of it.

And they have 2 different menus. One for the outside (more expensive), and one for the inside.
Oh and their portions are a lot smaller than the portions they serve at American restaurants.

All very excited to touch the Colosseum.

(It was closed and late but no worries we went back!)

At the very first Gelato place we saw we decided to get some.

We were all thrilled to try it and were definitely not disappointed.

Throughout the trip, I tried lemon, chocolate, dark chocolate, nutella, and pistachio.

They had way more flavors than that, but I am such a sucker for chocolate I mostly got that every time.

As we walked around more we noticed that there are places everywhere that sell Gelato. 

Some were better than others you could always see people walking around with their cone or cup of this yummy stuff.

I'm really missing Gelato right now.

We then walked down the street only to find the one and only Trevi fountain. 

Legend has it that if you toss a coin over your shoulder into the fountain  you will return to Rome one day.

I hope this is true!

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II and the tomb of the unknown soldier. There are always 2 guards standing in front -24 hours a day.

(The top of it kind of reminds people of a wedding cake especially when you are looking at it from a distance.)

Dumb moment #2:

As we were walking behind the monument we saw a similar statue to the one above up high on a pole.

As we approached and were all looking at it, (Keep in mind it was dark and small) I was like "oh my gosh look how cute baby piggies sucking their mommy pig."

You wouldn't believe the look I got from Steve (a friend of my dads who spends lots of time in Rome and was helping us find the "hot" spots for shooting).

Once I found out what this statue represented and that is was like the most famous statue/story of Rome, I was quite embarrassed.

At least we all got some good laughs out of it.

 I think I should have studied my history a bit better before coming:)

Well that about wrapped it up for the night, we did not get back to our place until like 2 in the morning.

So we were all exhausted.

I decided it would be good if I took a shower.

However it didn't take long to realize that #1 there was no shower curtain, and #2 it wasn't really even a shower. There was a little sprayer connected to the tub that you could lift up and hold over your body.

This made showering extremely difficult and awkward.

I don't know how they do it.

I now see why they don't shower every day.

I certainly didn't want to.

Friday, May 4th

We all slept in until 11:00 that morning.

But quickly got ready for another exciting day!

The Spanish steps.

The longest and widest steps in Europe.

It was a bit crowded in this area but there were gorgeous pink flowers all over the steps. 

And right in front of me are a few very famous designer shops such as Prada, Armani, Gucci, Valentino, Burberry and of course many more.

It was fun to look but definitely did not buy a single thing.

This fun little fountain ("Fountain of the Old Boat") was made to look like a sunken boat and was right in the middle of the cute cobblestone street.

Right after I got this picture we noticed a lady come up and fill her water bottle up right in this fountain.

That might be just a bit gross, just sayin.

Sophia and I bought a pair of sunglasses here, and tried some roasted walnuts that were like 1 euro a piece. 

And they weren't even that good.

Oh and my dad filmed Sophia getting her fortune told by a guy on the side of the street.

That was interesting.

The courtyard inside the Vatican museum.

This was some sort of random transformer ball that slowly rotated.

Sunglasses picture!

Touring the museum. 

You can't see it but the view behind us is breathtaking.

A very long hall of statues.

 The ceilings and walls were covered in beautiful paintings.

Inside the Sistine chapel.

In the middle of the ceiling is the famous "God and Adam touching fingers" section of the paintings,

painted by Michelangelo.

It took him 4 years to paint the ceiling of the chapel. 

It was so beautiful and quite amazing.

This fun staircase is found inside the museum leading in and out of it.

It is actually 2 staircases intertwined.

Another small courtyard.

A little view of St. Peter's Square and Basilica.

We ate lunch here.

This is one of the most famous bridges in Rome built in 239 A.D.

A large number of Pilgrams made their way across it to St. Peters.

The angels on top were sculpted by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini.

We got to this bridge at the perfect time of day because if you look closely you can see its reflection in the Tiber River.

It was stunning and looked just like something you would find in a storybook.

(You might be able to see it better in the picture above.) 

 

The crew spent a lot of time on this bridge  (I don't know what it is called) shooting this breathtaking view.

We're talking from like 5:00-10:00 pm.

So Emerson, Sophia, and me decided to venture off and find the main shopping street, Via del Corso.

Sophia and I were determined to find an H&M.

And we did! Yay!

It was pretty late and  the shops were all closing so we didn't get to spend much time shopping.

But we definitely found ourselves some yummy Gelato on our way back.
 

 Here are some gorgeous scenic views taken by Emerson's iphone.

St. Peter's Basilica and Ponte Sant'angelo in the background.

We finally made our way to dinner.

We ate under a tent that night.

Most of us tried calzones.

Except my dad, he wanted sea food.

So he got some creepy squid things.

You can tell we had fun playing with them.

So, like many other major cities in the world Rome is full of little sales guys that try their very hardest to get you to buy whatever it is that they are selling.

(No offense but usually it is stupid.)

Apparently they are allowed to come into restaurants, so tonight a guy came in selling these little animals that sing and dance.

I'm so mad I didn't get a picture but they seriously were the funniest things.

We were laughing our heads off.

In fact we were laughing so hard that not only was everyone in the restaurant looking at us in complete awe that we would find something so stupid hilarious, but we just couldn't resist buying one of them.

Sophia and I also bought ourselves some cute Torquoise rings along that street.

(Look for it in future pictures!)

At around 2 in the morning we headed for home.

 Still in awe that we had spent the entire day in this wonderful city.

Stay tuned for more!