"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