Viva Roma: Day 2

Day 2: We decided to do the Vatican on day two which meant the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. Walking through the Vatican museum again was great. There is so much beauty there and it is crazy to think that things have been for centuries. I have to admit though that my favorite piece in the Vatican museum is Raphael's School of Athens. I'm not even sure why, but it is beautiful and it takes up an entire wall in the room and I just love it. The Sistine Chapel is obviously beautiful and breathtaking, just as much the 2nd time as the 1st.

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Here is a view of St. Peter's Basilica from the Vatican museum right after you walk out of the Sistine Chapel. Now, St. Peter's is huge and ornate and absolutely breathtaking...however my favorite part of St. Peter's is the Michelangelo statue inside. Michelangelo's Pieta is by far my most favorite work of his. The softness is so beautiful and somehow it portrays so well how Mary would have felt holding her broken and dead Son. I absolutely love it and I was so excited to see it again.

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After we walked around and Meghan touched St. Peter's toe, we walked out to the courtyard that is so impressive with all of the columns.

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Now here comes the best part of our Roma trip: Juliano!! So on our way back to the hostel to rest for a little bit before dinner, we were walking up Via Nazionale and I saw an advertisement for La Traviata. Now, anyone who knows me knows how much I LOVE opera. I love it. The Met has me on all their mailing lists and I already have the 7 opera's that I am going to this season picked out. So anyways, I saw this advertisement and then we looked closer and saw that the performance was for that evening. What luck! So we decided to go talk to the man who was sitting at the table and see how much tickets were. Juliano! He told us that unfortunately that evening's performance was sold out, but that he would take our names and put them at the top of the standby list and we should come back at 8:30 that night and we would probably get in. Well the lovely Juliano not only put our names on the standby list, he put our names on the real list! We just showed up and payed our 30 Euro to see an Italian opera in Italy. It was so fantastic and Juliano was very cute and flirty with us. So here is a picture with us and Juliano - granted this picture was taken the two days later when we saw him again (I will tell that story on Day 4)

So what really happened after the opera is that we wanted to go see the Trevi fountain at night - because it just is so beautiful all lit up. So we went and got gelatto and got a British couple to take our picture. All in all what a fantastic day - opera & gelatto. A magical combination!