Just chilling in Rome, no big

So this was the 2nd day in Rome, July 8th. We left the hotel at 8 and went to St. John in Lateran church which was pretty cool, just not as cool as my church lol jk...kinda! Then there we learned about the signs and symbols of the apostles and how they were martyred - ps Bartholomew = creepy...I'm pretty sure I took a pic of the sculpture of him. One cool thing about this church is that it has statues of all of them and each one was done by a different sculptor of the day. Then we went to St. Mary of the Holy Steps and I really wanted to do the steps, but they didn't give us time to do them and they were closed when we had free time or were too far away from where we were at when we had free time. But these steps were brought here from Jerusalem and supposedly they are the ones that were leading up to Pilate's throne so Jesus walked up and down them. There are blood splatters on some of them, but who knows if they are the actual steps or if it is Jesus's blood. But you cannot climb these on your feet - you have to go up them on your knees and it's a very moving experience to see the people who feel compelled to go and endure a small fraction of Christ's pain by climbing these. At the top there's a special Pope chapel where supposedly an angel painted the painting in there. It was obviously closed off.

After that we went to St. Clement which was cool bc it was on top of the old church and cult place that was underground and we got to go down and look at it! Then St. Peter in Chains was pretty cool bc they have the chains Peter was chained in - they supposedly have magical power so they're on super lockdown so people don't jack them. Inside here they have the tomb of Pope Julius II so that was interesting. Then it was time for lunch which we ate right outside the COLLOSEUM!!!

So we ate lunch then learned about the Colloseum, but didn't go inside as a group...Then we went into the ruins part and learned about the Arch of Constantine, Arch of Titus, Basilica of Maxentius, Temple of Antoninos and Faustina, and the legend of the Rape of the Sabine (actually a love story...ask me sometime about the legends, I love them :D, nerd I know...lol), then the Dioscuri, Temple of the Vestal Virgins, Arch of Septimus Severus (I tried to convince DWade to sing the Harry Potter Puppet Pals song, but he didn't go for it), then Mamertine Prison, the Equestrain statue of Marcus Aurelius, Capitoline Hill and the piazza and buildings there (where we get Capitol Hill from fyi), then Trajans Column, and the monument to Victor Emanuel II (first president of united Italy). Then we had free time for the rest of the night so we went back to the Colloseum bc we were relatively close. It was soooo cool! Our group is the first one to get everyone to all go inside AND the first to not get anything valuable lost/stolen :D go us! Then we cleaned up and took a power nap then went to find kabobs which took about an hour to find. It was crazy, but they were good lol!