Most of the Rome trip was spent with walking tours and free time. We mostly visited churches and holy places for the tours, and a few other places on our own. There really isn’t a whole lot to say without pictures, so this will pretty much pictures and explanations from here.
The tomb of St. Justin Martyr, St. Stephan, and St. Lawrence. The tomb is located at The Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls. I am particularly fond of St. Justin Martyr, so I thought this was really cool.
I bet you can guess what this is. We went to the Coliseum early in the morning. Our first serious walking tour started here.
This is some sort of arch near the Coliseum.
Ancient Roman ruins. They are all over the place. Also, if you are ever in Rome and you are frustrated by their inferior metro system you can blame it on the ruins.
The altar in the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains.
These were the chains that bound St. Peter when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem, and Rome. As the story goes, the two sets of chains miraculously fused together when they were given to Pope Leo I.
I don’t remember what this is, but I remember it being significant. Once I figure out what it is I will post again.
We eventually ended up going to the Vatican Museum. It was fun, but there really wasn’t a whole lot their aside from statues like these and the Sistine Chapel. I didn’t get to take any pictures of the chapel, but honestly I was surprised by how small it was.
Here are some more statues from the Vatican Museum, I thought Gram might find this funny.
We went to Mass at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls later that evening. It was an interesting church, on of the nicest looking churches that we visited in Rome. St. Paul is buried here, except for his head which was moved to another church that I visited later.
This is the chain that bound St. Paul before he was executed.
St. Paul Outside the Walls from outside.
Later in the evening a few of us rode buses out to the Trevi Fountain. According to legend, if you throw a coin in the fountain you are destined to return to Rome some day.
Of all of the ridiculous nonsense that we have been through over here, getting to and from the Trevi fountain has to have been the worst. The bus system is really difficult to figure out, and it is much worse when you have to deal with some of the weirder natives. We encountered some strange people on the way there and many more on the way back. Most notably, we had a clearly insane man come up to us at a bus stop. He started screaming something about Nazis at us in Italian. Naturally we got away from him as quickly as possible at the cost of us missing the first bus that we could catch back to the hotel. I wasn’t exactly very happy about that.
The fountain itself really wasn’t bad. This is me in front of it.
Here is Mary by the Trevi Fountain.
The school took us on another walking tour the next day. We visited the Spanish Steps. I guess they have almost nothing to do with Spain.
Mary and I at the Spanish Steps.
The Pantheon. Once a pagan shrine, now a Catholic church.
The inside of the dome in the Pantheon.
Emily trying to be funny in a picture of me in front of the Pantheon.
The Basilica of St. John Lateran. It’s a big one.
The skulls of Saints Peter and Paul are in the golden busts of their faces.
This is the largest single piece obelisk in the world. It is just outside of the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
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