BHGreene: Rome

Day 2 (Tuesday-1/13/2015)
Pantheon
Piazza Colonna
St. Ignatius Basilica
Piazza Navona
Chiostro del Bramante (MC Escher art museum)
St. Peter's Plaza and Basilica

We honestly did not plan out our trip... at all.... yes there were a few things we planned to go see and do, but we didn't plan out the day/time.... didn't care. Which was nice because that meant we were free to wonder and found some really neat places!

Today started with the Pantheon. AMAZING! I didn't know that Raphael is buried there.

Brendan had looked up "free things to do in Rome" and found St. Ignatius church WHICH the ceiling was one of the works of art I had studied in my art history class. I actually loved this church the best out of all the others. I even think the ceiling is more beautiful then the Sistine Chapel. AND it's free!

There were signs all over the city for an M.C. Escher gallery... an artist Brendan has always enjoyed. We found the place (kinda got lost on the way). Ended up being my favorite art museum. I couldn't take pictures inside except for some "selfie" areas. The gallery was very well done--lots of his works and well made areas to learn about how he did his art work. He lived in Italy and married an Italian woman.

We found out that the Pope does a prayer/blessing every Wednesday morning, but you need a ticket to go. So we walked to the Vatican to get the ticket and planed to do the whole thing after hearing the Pope the next day. We got in line, to what we thought was the ticket booth, but ended up touring St. Peter's. It is HUGE! So ornate!
-- sadly, it ended up that the Pope was not in town. He was in the Philippines for the recent typhoon. BUT, we were very glad we did St. Peter's then because the line was fairly short. We went back the next day (because one blog suggested mailing postcards from the Vatican for the neat stamp they'd get) and the line to St. Peter's Basilica was HUGE -- wrapping around the piazza. We had pretty much just walked in the day before! Perfect!