Rome

I should confess that Rome isn't my favorite city in Italy.  Since I've only been there in the summer, when I picture Rome I think of intense heat, insanely large crowds and paying 6 euros for a single bottle of Fanta. On this trip I was perfectly happy to skip Rome entirely because I had been there on two previous trips, but I needed to go to Rome to process my Russian visa--twice.  

There are no pictures of Rome from my first trip there this summer because it was a comedy of errors.  It poured the entire day. And I mean poured.  It started just as Mer and I got to the visa processing center & it was so intense that we couldn't even see the street.  We ended up hanging out at the center for nearly an hour waiting for it to stop, and when it finally eased up we made a run for a cafe to wait it out.  When it tapered out to a drizzle we decided to wait for the bus...for 45 minutes.  When the bus seemed as though it was never going to come we attempted to take the metro only to find out that most of the lines were down & we could only go back to the train station.  Poor Mer pretty much saw nothing of Rome. It was one of those types of days.

Sean and I had much better luck on the return trip to pick up my visa even if I was still not 100% better from my bout of salmonella (I would guess 40% better).  The heat was intense, but we managed to run all around Rome to see all of the big places.  We walked so much. So so much.  

We also got to see quite a few things that I had never seen before. One was a local organic market that was right near the Forum. We got to sample local cheeses and even local beer.  We were also able to go to the Pope's Cathedral which we stumbled upon while looking for the aqueducts.  We just so happened to be there while the Pope's main bishop was saying mass so it was kind of a big deal (apparently).  It was pretty amazing to see, and definitely an unexpected adventure.