Rome ~ Day 1

Rob and I at the Vatican.

Amazing statues, frescas, and amounts of people.

St. Peter's Basilica, swiss guards, the dome, and Jon Paul in the flesh/wax.

Eating gelato and creating a man made fountain :)

Another unbelievable church.

Trevi fountain.

Fake engagements at Trevi fountain. They were taking wedding pictures and we were anxious to use our camera. Thus we did some random engagement pictures...including kissing. Ha ha. There were a million people there and some complete stranger approached us and said "My friend and I have a bet...where are you from?" When we replied Utah, his next question of course was "Are you mormon?" We replied in the affirmative to which he responded "Yeah, we thought so. You guys stick out from the crowd. You're just so happy." Turns out he was a Mormon too...takes one to know one. I guess that's what we get for being goofballs.

The 6 of us (Shawn, Chari, Jeff, Shannon, Me & Rob) hanging out on The Spanish Steps...a famous gathering spot in Rome. Especially for couples that want to display their make out skillz.

Night life in Rome. The end to a beautiful day. (Except that we missed the bus back to the hotel and had to wait an hour until the next one came. We all attempted to share a single door step...Jeff ended up practically sleeping on the ground. We were pretty wasted.)

Cefalu

Ah, the Italy trip continues. Next we went to the city of Cefalu'. Cefalu' is more of a tourist city with nice beaches, hence not one of Rob's mission cities. But we decided to go so we could really take advantage of our vacation. Cefalu' was BELLISIMA! Right on the ocean, ancient architecture, winding cobblestone shops, and a gelateria around every corner. The first night we were there we took a lovely stoll along the boardwalk, and saw several wedding couples taking pictures. We made our way over to the pier and got to watch a lightning show. Rob made up a game involving the location of each lightning strike. I ended up winning and got a backrub for as many minutes as the number of lightning strikes in my location. After walking along the shops, we got ourselves some breaded rice ham balls (Arancini) and gelato and went to bed.

Rob and I were excited to get to our hotel and use its accomodations...I was excited about the shower which had more jets than I'd ever seen. Rob was excited about the TV and internet. This is where we officially established the mantra "NOTHING ever works in Europe!" I could only get the overhead shower to turn on and Rob could only get the most basic TV stations and had to talk to the receptionist several times before he could get the internet to work...slowly. Oh well. It was spacious and clean so we were happy.

The next morning we hiked "La Roca". We had planned to hike to the top, but they had closed it due to safety issues. We did make it far enough to see the whole city below... breathtaking. We enjoyed watching "Grandpa", a fellow hiker try to make his way around the barrier and get to higher ground. Due to a whole bunch of cactus and no climbing apparatus he didn't make it very far.

We didn't mind our hike being cut short. Instead we explored the local cathedral, ate some pasta (more betting and backrub minutes involved), bought an olive oil vessel, bought some more gelato (fragola and limone) and look a very long walk along the beach.