"Did You Get Married Today?"

Taxis in Rome seem pretty easy to catch and even easier to pay for. Especially at 7:00AM in a wedding dress. Why you ask? Well, we had places to be:

After moving from the wrong entrance to the right entrance, getting trapped by an insane mob,  finding out the original entrance wasn't wrong, having the wedding dress stepped on by multiple Italian men and climbing over a pillar, we got into the square. Mostly to sit in the sun for a few hours and get burnt. Oh, and we almost forgot:

TO MEET THE POPE!

No really, that happened. As in, actually shook the hand of and spoke (very poor) Spanish to the actual honest-to-God Pope. There is photographic evidence (we just don't possess that....yet). It was incredible. The pope lined us up on the steps of the Basilica and went to each couple individually to meet with them. He spoke to us very briefly and gave us a personal blessing. Looking into the eyes of such an amazing Man of God, the head of the Church, was an out of this world experience.  This was the highlight of the day, trip so far, and maybe Rachel's life other than the wedding.

When we finally left, we had to find a taxi again to get back to the hotel. This consisted of walking about 2 blocks to the now relocated taxi stand with Rachel still in a wedding dress and having people of various nationalities asking us questions or to take pictures with us, usually in a language we didn't understand. Kind of a surreal experience. We met people from all over the world because we had our wedding clothing on. A real experience of the universal church. Eventually, we made it back to the hotel and changed and were back on our touristy ways.

We grabbed a quick lunch (side note: apparently Italians will put mayo on pizza) we headed down the road to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. Like most ancient buildings, it was impressive that they were still standing. However, two things from the Forum stood out the most. First was this building:

They built that in ancient times. That is insane. This is large by our standards and this wasn't even the tallest part of the building. The missing part was 55feet TALLER. The other most impressive part:
look at the green door (behind one of the pillars) in the picture below:

That door was ground level in the 1500s. As in, everything we were standing in at that point was underground for centuries. That blew our minds.

Finally, we hit the Colosseum. Nick found it the most impressive and had been looking forward to it the most. I know most of you know that story, so we'll spare you too many details and leave you a picture to go.

Until tomorrow!

P.S. Rachel finally got her gelato

When in Rome, You May Get Wet

It's still raining. Sometimes a lot. And sometimes there's sun. I really swear that we left New England.

We had originally anticipated going to the Colosseum this morning and spending time in that area, but who wants to explore outside when it's raining (pouring, or just an ocean) outside. Instead, we made our way down the street to explore inside a very large and very beautiful church: Santa Maria Maggiore. I'm just going to put the picture of the ceiling down below and let that speak for itself. This church is special because its one of the first and oldest churches in Rome. You can tell by its flat ceiling and small windows just at the top. It has a piece of the manger of the Lord underneath its main alter in a beautiful statue display.  They also had confessions going on all the time. You just had to kneel right outside the confessional, which Rachel thought was really neat.

From there it was off to the Capuchin Crypt. Ever wanted to see several thousand friar's worth of bones decorating 5 out of 6 crypts? Yeah, Nick didn't either. But so far, it may be one of the more interesting sights that have been seen. We couldn't take pictures, but look it up for yourselves.

And yet somehow after looking at that many human bones, we decided it was lunchtime. Nothing particularly special at this location other than people watching Italians on their lunch break in a Wine Bar (honestly not as fancy as it sounds, but still decent. We had wine with our lunch since it was cheaper than getting a soda.


One observation about Roman pedestrians: They are crazy. They have absolutely no fear. We watched as  a group casually strolled out into oncoming traffic to cross the street. No one runs across the street, everyone takes their time, even when a car is about to hit them. I may have said it before, but this place is a bit like Boston, except smaller streets, crazier drivers and pedestrians and many hundreds of years older.

As the day progressed, we headed to pick up our tickets for the Papal audience tomorrow morning! Since that put us near the Trevi Fountain, we decided that was the next stop in the newest round of rain. It was huge! It was majestic! It was...very closed and empty for restoration. Rachel is smiling on the outside, but feels nothing but wet socks on the inside:

Afterwards, we decided to take a walk and window-shop for a bit. Which would have been more fun without the umbrellas, giant puddles and even wetter socks. We wondered for a while and got lost, suddenly finding ourselves in front of a giant old building. Rome is so filled with giant old buildings, this one wasn't even labeled on the map.  It was, however, close to a restaurant a friend recommended we check out, so we decided to continue out wet walk that way.

The restaruant turned out to be down a small dark street, no where we would have ever gone on our own. Something we have noticed about Roman restaurants is that they are all like the North End, only one or two small rooms with just a couple of tables. This one was no exception. The waitress was excellent and the food as amazing as the hype.  So is the wine. We both finished our pasta dishes but they didn't leave you overfilled like American food usually does.  Our stomachs were happy the entire walk back.

Still no Gelato. It's hard to eat in the rain holding an umbrella. We will be making up for it tomorrow.

Bathroom mystery

Does anyone know what the thing in the right is? We found it in the bathroom...

When in Rome, Day 1

We made it to Rome! 

Our flight over was just as long as advertized. They kept the fully bright lights on and did not allow the seat backs to be reclined until half-way through the flight, so we didn't get a lot of sleep. We did, however, get to see both a sunset and a sunrise while on the same plane. And both were breath-taking.

We weren't in Ireland for long, but we can tell you it is in fact very green. More on that when we return next week...

The Rome airport was CRAZY busy and people speaking every kind of language were everywhere. We got our bags (Great news, my dress didn't get lost on the plane!) and went to find our ride in the sea of livery service people. And boy was it some ride.  I now know where my father gets his driving tendancies. The guy was driving a very large vechice like an F1 racer. Now, the streets of Rome are very narrow and filled with lots of bumps (basically Boston) so we had more than a few close calls with cars, people, buses, city curbs, etc. The Dutch gentelman next to me told me at one point that his wife hadn't stopped praying throguh the whole journey. (Nick's side note: stop getting into livery vans in Europe....)

We ended up making it to the Hotel safe, but 3 hours early for check-in. Which was unfortunate because all we wanted to do was take a nap.  Instead, we wandered the streets to find a pizza shop.  We ordered one pizza to split, and the waiter told us to get two. So we did, thinking they were small. What came out were two full sized pizzas. Apparently, Italians eat an entire pizza, sometimes two, by themselves. Rachel's pizza was far superior to Nick's. But, they were both amazing. However, we barely finished a total of one pizza. We are clearly not full Italians.

We returned to the hotel to settle in and take a quick siesta. Then it was off to explore Rome and settle into the city that is the backdrop for our honeymoon, part 1. Except the skys opened up and dumped 25 to 50mm (that's 1-2" for those keeping score) of rain on our heads as we walked around the block and right back into the hotel room soaking wet.  Well, we went to buy umbrellas, then we returned to the room. 

Eventually, we decided to do Rome, Take-out style.   We bought a bottle of "cheap" wine (that was amazing) and went to a restaurant around the corner.  We watched the guy put together our antipasto salad and had a blast listening to the wait staff tease each other in Italian while waiting for our food. For those curious, it was amazing. My favorite part? The antipasto salad had two melon slices covered in prosciutto. The combination of sweet and salty was delicious. 

The Adventure Begins

We got married yesterday!!!!    We had an awesome time celebrating with all our friends and family. Thank you so much to everyone who made the journey from near and far to be with us on our special day. We felt so loved and supported as we begin this new journey of our lives.

Today, we are preparing to leave for our journey to Rome and Barcelona. It is the trip of a lifetime and we are stoked to be going. Check back here for tales of this and other life journeys we take together in our new marriage.