ROME day 2/Happy Birthday to me day 6!

Hello all, who knows if you can even keep up with me now. This will be three posts in less that one month. Defiantly a record. I know this post didn't come as fast as I thought it would, but when your celebrating your birthday. . . what can I say? Ok, really I was just at work so I couldn't work on the blog! So our second day in Rome was as busy if not busier than the first!

We took all public transportation here's Mark and I on the bus. By the end of the trip we could get pretty much anywhere we needed to be using the Metro, buses, and trains. Super easy way to travel, and much cheaper than taxis.

So we decided to start again in Vatican City on day two. The Vatican museum closes early so we wanted to get there early enough to go in all 1100 rooms. Ha ha yeah right. I mean going in all 1100 rooms. Did you know that the Vatican museum is the largest in the world? They told us that if we spent 10 seconds in front of every piece of art it would take you more than 12 years to get through the entire museum. So knowing that we decided to pay a little extra for someone to take us through the neatest parts of the museum while explaining them to us. We both decided 4 hours of museum later that it was the best decision of the trip so far. So this picture is of Jim our tour guide from Michigan. He earned a spot in this blog, he knew his stuff. We were so impressed with our tour, and all the information we received about the Vatican and Catholic church.
This picture if of what Italians loving refer to as the rotten tomato. The artist's last name in Italian means tomato, and Jim told us that most Italians hate this piece and thus have nicknamed it. We heard a lot of funny nicknames for some of the newer(anything less than 200 years is considered "new") art.
This is the most famous statue in the Vatican museum. It is called Laocoon and his sons. I'm no art historian, and haven't really ever thought that I enjoyed art very much. However Rome somewhat changed that. . . not so much me being an art historian that would have taken more than 3 days. . . but I have found a new appreciation for the arts.
This was the sculpture that Michelangelo used to study to learn how to draw the human figure. It's said that he studied it for hours at a time.
So, this was me rubbing a foot. . . it happens to be the foot of St. Peter. You'd be able to tell that if Mark had included the most important part of the background in the picture! ha ha I thought it was pretty funny when we got back to the hotel and was looking through the pictures and saw that you couldn't tell what in the world the picture was of, so yeah, it's of St. Peter and if you rub his foot it's supposed to bring you blessings, and back to Italy.
Here's what my picture would have looked like had St. Peter been included. :) The statue's foot was actually half rubbed off from all the people everyday that rub his foot in hopes of returning to Italy.
After we finished our tour we walked to see what we could see. Here's a little more of what Rome had to offer us.
This was Piazza di Popolo, another plaza we loved. We toured the square and then were off to the Spanish Steps to get a bite to eat. . .
YUMMY!!
For real, YUMMY!So I may have enjoyed the hot chocolate, and food a little too much!
And a crepe for dessert!
This was all right next to the Spanish Steps. There was amazing scenery and crazy shopping there, none that we could afford, but it was fun to look around! Unfortunately it was raining and dark so our pictures didn't really turn out well. So, on to the Trevi Fountain we went. We took plenty of pictures of the fountain. However same story as before, it was dark and a little rainy. . . none of the pictures we took would do it the justice it deserves, so please look it up on Wikipedia and see how beautiful it really is!
We knew it was late but we were so close we decided to walk to the President's house. This was a statue right outside. They have a lot less security for the Italian president! You could walk all around the outside of his house. There were a few guards, but no fences.

Well this is where we called it a night. Actually we still had to ride the metro to get closer to our bus stop, and then walk back to the hotel. But this was the last of the pictures from day two! It was a wonderful day!
We both look a little scruffy! Long day!