Pope, Sunburn, Coloseum and smiles

Today starts out bright and early, the alarm went off at 7:30. I hit the snooze button 3 times and finally got up at 7:45. I was tired, but thankfully am sleeping better. Only woke up at 4 am for about 25 minutes and then fell back asleep. I am absolutely exhausted right now so I am sure I will sleep well tonight.

We hurried out the door at 9:15 for the Vatican. We had tickets to the papal audience and along with 50,000 other people we saw the POPE! The place was jam packed with people but we saw the Pope drive by in a little golf cart thing with his red hat on (I am sure there is an official name for it, but not being Catholic I dont know). He then went up to a center and spoke for about 15 minutes in Italian (I have no idea what he said). Then an offical representative for each country spoke announcing the special visitors in the audience that country. The Pope then spoke for about 4 minutes after each representative. He said the same thing in 5 different languages. Italian, French, English, Spanish and Russian. At the end he did a blessing in Italian. The blessing was sung and although it was printed on the back of our tickets it was hard to follow along because none of us know Italian. This blessing was where the Pope blessed us, anything we brought, our families and those near and dear to us. Mike had something special for his sister, his grandmothers cross and something from his mother. Jake had a special box from Bri's mom and a rosary of Bri's. It was very moving. But honestly, it was long. It was hotter than heck and we were in the direct sun. Although we had tickets for seats, we did not sit in seats because we got there with no time to spare. We arrived at the Vatican at 10 am and it took us 30 minutes to go through security (which was a joke because people beeped and they just waved you through). The Pope came out promptly at 10:30 am despite thousands of people still outside. It finished a little after 11:30 am. We all sunscreened up beforehand, but as the day went on and we reapplied sunscreen, it still didn't matter.

Temperatures were crazy hot today, over 100 and we were parched, sunburnt and tired by this evening.

After the Papal Audience we took the underground to the Coloseum and got a nice bite to eat of pizza, paninis and beer. Then we met Nicki from Through Eternity Tours for a Coloseum, Palantine Hill and Roman Forum Tour including the newly opened Augustus Ceasar private house. It started at 1:30 and ended at 7 pm. We had a stop for gelato and water midway. This was phenomenal. We got the history of Rome, Emperors, you name it we learned about it. But it was done in such a wonderful way that the time flew by and Nicki was full of antecdotes and facts. The only way the day could have been better was if it was 20 degrees cooler. We probably walked 10 miles today went through an 8 oz tube of sunscreen, 6 bandaids and 3 gallons of liquids. Yet we only peed twice all day! We must have refilled our waterbottles a dozen times in the fountains throughout the area. Fresh, cold water...that was FREE!

After our tour ended we took a bus toward the Pantheon and ate dinner at Macharroni...it was delicous..I had a glass of proseco with my fresh buffalo mozzarella and was in heaven.
I will be able to post pictures tomorrow because we found a small internet cafe by the apartment that will let me bring in my laptop. So, barring any difficulties I should have some wonderful pictures for you all to see. One in particular that I think you will all enjoy is from the Coloseum, there was a gentlemen dressed us in gladiator attire. He had all of us pose in fun ways...We had a great time.
Tomorrow we are off to Orvieto by train!
Ciao!