We chose the Ultimate Rome because it offered both the inside of the Colosseum as well as the Sistine Chapel. Yeah, we saw both but very little of them.

We started with a very long drive to Rome. Traffic was atrocious and it took forever to get our normal sized bus into the city. We learned later there was a subway worker's strike so traffic was worse than normal for a Friday morning. Other than the major sites there is just so much cool stuff in Rome. Various Roman ruins seem to be just about everywhere in addition to more modern structures.


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Trevi Fountain and Pantheon

Once we parked we took a walking tour through the old part of town. The first wow moment was when we saw Tevi Fountain. We were expecting your typical nice fountain in the middle of a square. We didn't expect that huge structure the size of a building a massive amounts of water gushing out of it. The next highlight of that was the Pantheon. It was built over 2000 years ago and stands today pretty much like when it was built. Impressive structure.

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Colosseum

We then went to the Colosseum. On the way we drove past a ton of interesting sites, including the ruins of the original Roman Senate, the palace of the Emperor and other significant sites. It was hot and there were tons of tourists around. We went in and took a very brief walk through. It was much bigger than I expected and impressive.

After that we were on our own for a quick lunch, we picked a sit down restaurant across the street where we could continue to enjoy the view of the Colosseum in air conditioned comfort.

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Vatican Museum

Finally we headed to the Vatican to see the Vatican Museum and then a visit to the Sistine Chapel. The Vatican Museum is jam packed with stuff. First was the statue area, where tons of statues were lined up seemingly arbitrarily. Then the tapestry area, where the tapestries were arranged in some sort of order. And finally the paintings. All very impressive but we definitely got the sense that this only the beginning of the collection.

We then ducked out a back staircase down some stairs then found ourselves in the Sistine Chapel. This is where you're supposed to be silent and not to take pictures. Well, people were chatting out loud and the guards were constantly catching someone trying to sneak a picture. *SIGH*

Honestly, it was nice but for me it didn't live up to the hype. I guess I was expecting some absolutely amazing work of art and yeah, it was big but I definitely wasn't wowed. It's true, every inch of wall was painted and yeah, there was a lot of detail. Maybe the dim lighting just didn't allow me to get the full impact.

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Saint Mark's Basilica

We then exiting the chapel and went to check out Saint Mark's Basilica, the largest church in the world. Now this was impressive. We were told it can hold 30,000-40,000 people for a church service. Some of the impressive works were another sculpture by Michelangelo and other works by other well known artists of the Renaissance. The center of the church has a little shrine and a box reportedly containing the remains of Saint Mark. (double-check accuracy). For me the most interesting was the carving on the door. Hardly anyone looked at it when exiting but it was quite morbid.

We left through the St. Mark's Square and made a quick stop at a Vatican Gift Shop before the long bus ride back to the ship.

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