2025 Italy - December - Day 06 - Last day in Rome.

December 7, 2025

Well, today is our last day in Rome.  It’s been fun to see the old stuff again.  But it’s a little too crazy here for me.

Our goal today was to get out to see the Rome Temple.  We also wanted to attend church services.  So it turns out that there is a chapel on the same grounds as the temple.  Two wards meet in the building and chose the one that started at the latest time…10:30 AM.  To get there, we left a little early, around 9 AM.  And that was a good thing.  The metro system is good, generally always on time.  The bus system here…pretty horrible.  So going to the temple, we got off the metro stop and went to the place to wait for the buses.  We waited and we waited.  The bus we wanted kept saying the same arrival time even though that time came and went.  Using GPS, I then chose a different route and bus and it arrived just fine. 

The temple and the temple grounds are amazing.  The grounds has the temple, a visitor center, a large chapel and living accommodations.  We arrived about 15 minutes before Sacrament Meeting started, so we walked around the temple and took some pictures.  Sacrament meeting was nice…all in Italian of course.  But we were given ear pieces and a sister missionary did her best to translate what was being said.  This is the first trip when I did not bring a white shirt and tie.  I don’t know why I did not pack such.  But I didn’t.  So Jeff showed me up in his formal dress attire as he brought a nice shirt and tie.  Heck, he even brought a dress coat.  He looked great.  Now the girls wore pants (trousers) but in the middle of the temple plaza pot skirts over the top.  That looked funny watching them dress just outside the chapel doors in the square.  We met many American couples serving there in the temple.  I think they actually get 12 foreign missionary couples to serve in the temple.  They also have family history missionaries and MLS missionaries here.  Sacrament meeting was a fast and testimony meeting.  One brother blessed a baby in Spanish and his wife bore her testimony in Spanish.  Another couple, who sat behind us, also spoke Spanish.  And they turned out to be from Colombia, where I served my mission.  That was cool to speak with them for a minute.  After church, we went into the amazing visitor center where they have a Christus that is half-circled by statues of the original 12 Apostles called by Jesus Christ during His ministry.   They also had a structure that looked like an Italian home that would sit on a corner inside the visitor center that was used as a place to teach.  That was unique.  We met the Director of the temple and his wife who are from Mesa, AZ.  They were called as ordinance workers in the temple but were asked to be the directors when the called director had a heart attack and had to go home.  So they will be doing this for another 18 months I believe.  We talked about our mission and some how got on the topic of cars.  They said that all their temple missionaries were frustrated also with the policies given to them relative to cars.  Here they can ‘rent’ a car that is covered by the church but they can ONLY go to church meetings and shopping with them.  If you are a foreigner here, you can’t buy a car.  So the Director and his wife entered into a private rental contract so they could use their car for more things.  I guess the missionary and temple departments need to get together to figure this out.  Anyway, great stop seeing this beautiful temple.  We need to come back and do a session or two here.

The journey home was a killer.  What was supposed to take an hour took almost 2.5 hours.  We were supposed to be home bv about 12:30 PM.  We arrived at a Chinese restaurant just before 2 PM near our flat.  The Chinese food was pretty good…a good change from all the pasta we’ve been eating.  The bus ride, again, was unbearable.  We waited and waited for the suggested bus.  Never came.  Finally we jumped on another that would then force us to use buses all the way to our flat.  The first bus took forever again.  But it came and it was packed most of the 20+ minute ride.  We got off at our stop looking for a bus to go to Termini, the train station.  One came.  We got on it…went around the corner…and there was Termini.  We had no idea we were that close.  So confusing…but we made it.

After lunch, we split up.  The girls went out shopping looking at stuff they need not buy (nor have room for).  But then again, they don’t like shopping…at least that’s what I hear all the time.  I know they will return as they want to find one of these Christmas markets.  So we are waiting and I am writing.  But more to come to close out our trip.

So around 5 PM we headed out to Piaza Navona to check out a Christmas market there.  It’s been nice being by Termini as it’s always easy to catch some form of transportation.  They have a huge bus terminal outside the train station.  Anyway, we caught a bus that grew to have tons of people.  And we got to one intersection and I would guess that it took 10 to 15 minutes to get through it.  Just bad flow.  I think lanes were trying to condense down.  Anyway, we got there in about 40 minutes…I think it was about 1.5 miles away.  The Christmas market was jumping.  The plaza was chuck full of people.  There was a Merry-go-Round, statues and quite a few Christmas stuff booths.  Nothing hand made or special…just stuff.  We made sure we hit everyone though.  Florence had better food options at their market.  Nonetheless, we ended the night sitting and talking eating Gelato.  It was my first and only Gelato the whole week.  I’m not sure how that happened!!!  Coming home we went to a bus stop only to find a bus load of people wanting to get on the bus we wanted.  When the bus pulled up, no one got off the already full bus!  So we punted.  We went for a 5 minute walk to another bus station and caught a less crowded bus that got us home.  Last Rome bus!  Thank heavens.  Between my GPS on my phone pointing me in different directions and the tardiness of these buses…I’m done.  Tomorrow its a train to the airport and then hopefully a couple of flights home. One last thing about the buses is that no one taps on or off.  No one…unless you’re a tourist.  But eventually you figure it out.  We did!

Summary…it has been a fun week.  You know you’ve done a lot when you come home for the evening and you just want to crash.  That’s how it has been every night.  It’s been fun traveling with Jeff and Michelle.  They have been great travelers, forgiving travelers, when their guide gets tired and frustrated with many things.  But I think we hit all the places and did all the things that we hoped to in 6 days, 7 nights.  Italy is a fun place with so much to see and so much to eat!  The latter is probably why I like it so much!  

Arriverdeci!

Some pictures:

This is the path we took from the bus stop that was just outside the temple grounds.  So it was a short walk to get to the side of the temple.

Such a beautiful building.  Holiness to the Lord.  House of the Lord.  That is written in many languages above the front door of the temple.

Some pretty ladies we found along the way having way too much fun.

This is all stained glass one one wall in the beautiful visitor center on site there.  Amazing work from a guy in Provo whose done a lot of glass work for temples all over the world.

Us in front of the Christus with statues of the 12 original Apostles circling behind Him.  It’s amazing to live in a day when the gospel has been restored and once again the priesthood is on the earth and 12 Apostles form a quorum today.  Amazing.

Inside the visitor center is found this building…what looks to be a building you’d see all over Italy.  Great replica.

This is the visitor center.  I bet it looks amazing at night with it lit up and you can see the Christus and the 12 original Apostles.

Us in the visitor center with the temple in the background.

Denise took this shot to show Kami that her backpack gifts from long ago are still in great use.  I use it all the time.  It packs up to nothing.

One of our many times on the metro.

This is sign that sits just outside the temple grounds pointing people to the temple.

A small manger scene on the temple grounds.

When everyone was back at the flat, we had a little fun.  Denise and Michelle dangled themselves outside our windows just to get a photograph of each other.  They could have died for just a photograph!

To kill an hour, the two who say ‘they don’t like to shop’, spent more time buying stuff.  This happened to be their version of a ‘Dollar Store’ where everything was selling for 1 euro.

At some point, Denise whipped out the hot chocolate she has stolen over the years from hotels and we all had a quick cup of hot chocolate.  Way to go Denise.  It was worth the possibility of jail time.

Michelle with a death wish.   Don’t jump!  You can recover your money over the next few years of working!

This is Piaza Navona where the Christmas market was.  Really lots of people there.

Another picture of the market.

Another picture of the market.

Geez…how many pictures of the market do we need?  Never enough pictures, right?  I won’t answer that.

The Piaza did have some beautiful buildings all around with tons of restaurants.  That was pretty cool.

Denise wanted to ride this.  Should I be surprised?  She had her eye on a horse that rocked but I think a little child had it and she knew she would feel bad later if she bumped that child.  So she chose not to ride it.

This is what Tim and Jeff did the whole time at Christmas markets and our walks everywhere we went.  Hurry up and wait.  You can see that we were thrilled with the opportunity to do this.  <Not!>

One of many trinket booths that pretty much had the same stuff.  But there was a lot of it.

The beautiful fountain that sits in the middle of the Piaza.

Honestly, I’m not sure why witches were a part of all this.  They sold some witch stuff too.  Nonetheless, we got a picture of our American witches.  Don’t they look great?

At the end, we closed our adventure with a gelato.  It was quite yummy.  Gelato is everywhere.

Even Santa couldn’t pass up a European Christmas market.  Who says he needs elves for all his stuff that he hauls everywhere.  He hits Christmas markets like they are 7-11’s.   It’s Christmas time…Merry Christmas everyone!

2025 Italy - December - Day 05 - Oh my Rome!

December 6, 2025

Hello Rome.  Holy smokes…I think I walked this entire town and my feet so much!  All our feet hurt a ton!  Here’s what went down.

We were up earlier than we wanted to this morning.  We were on the road around 8 AM as we had tickets to get into the Coliseum at 8:45 AM.  Actually 9 AM but you needed to be there 15 minutes early.  Managing our way on the metro to the Coliseum was straight forward.  We were there in plenty of time.  The lines were already long.  But having tickets in advance helped a lot.  We were in the Coliseum before 9 AM.   The Coliseum is always amazing to me…its size, its age, how it is engineered.  Such history here.  After we walked up the Palatino hill to look out over the Roman Forum.  It’s a pretty area and the walk was not too bad (at the time).  The forum has some cool old buildings.  But we didn’t spend  long there as we wanted to get to the Vatican to try and get into the museums, Sistine Chapel and the Basilica.  

The bus ride to the Vatican got interesting.  We caught the first bus just fine.   However, I think we go on the 49 bus going the wrong way.  I tried to ask the bus driver if we were on the right bus and he just got frustrated and angry with me.  So I backed off.  He spoke no English and I no Italian.  So I stayed on the bus.  As I watched the GPS, the bus was going the opposite direction that I needed to go.  So I knew I got on the wrong 49 bus.  So I thought we’d just get off at the first stop.  But as the bus drove, it looped around and started to follow the same path if I were to walk it.  So I thought, let’s just stay on it until it starts to veer off the walking path the GPS showed.  Well, the traffic was horrible.  So we stayed with the bus until we were within a 10 minute walk of the Vatican Museum entrance.  As we got close, we could see the long being amazingly long to get tickets.  There were guys on the street pushing tours.  So Denise and Michelle inquired of what they were offering.  In the end, we bought a tour but it wasn’t going to start for about 2 hours.  So we decided to go get some lunch nearby.

Lunch is something to write about here.  There were 2 places on opposite corners of the street.  One had little people eating there.  The other had quite a few.  I checked the prices at the one with fewer people and they seemed a bit high.  So we went to the other.  It turned out to be amazing.  We ordered our 4 plates and then the food began to come.  They brought a 2 liter bottle of water.  They brought bread (first time we’ve seen that in Italy for a meal).  They brought a plate of what seemed to be pork and beans to share (they were awesome).  They then brought our plates.  Great portions.  But then the guy brought an extra plate of pasta that we did not order.  Unfortunately it was too much to eat.  After we were done, the guy brought a desert out to share.  And then, they brought a couple of alcoholic drinks (limoncello and something else) which we turned down.  We laughed wondering what our bill was going to be?!  Well, it turned out to be the price for basically our 4 plates.  We still wonder why they were throwing all that food at us.  But it was a really good place.

Finally it was time to go on our tour.  Our tour guy was a nice Italian guy that spoke fairly good English.  It was interesting to see all the different types of art.  But I find it funny that they cover all the groin areas with leaves on all the statues.  These were all added long after the statues had been created.  We walked through many of the museums before we entered the Sistine Chapel where conclaves are performed and pope’s chosen…which was done quite recently.  The work of Michelangelo is pretty amazing in there.  After completing the chapel, we headed out to St. Peter’s Square where every Catholic in the world was.  Apparently some Jubilee is going on and some door leading into the Basilica is open that only opens every 25 years.  Yes, every 25 years.  Also, Sunday and Monday, the Vatican is closed…Monday due to a religious holiday.  The place was packed with people and we had to wait a good 30 minutes to get in and walk around.  I think the Basilicia is the biggest cathedral that I’ve ever been in.  It’s huge and I liked its interior.  It’s pretty.

After completing that, we had about 25 minutes of walking and about 10 minutes of metro to get back to our flat.  We arrived back around 6:30 PM wiped out looking for Ibprofen!

Here are some pictures:

Pretty fountain at St. Peter’s square.

Inside the Basilica at the Vatican.

Beautiful center of the cathedral where the do the mass.

Our lunch spot and waiter.

This is the spiral staircase that you use to get up to the beginning of the Vatican Museums.

This sits in one of the squares at the Vatican.  It’s just an art piece.

You get to see lots of these beautiful domes that some famous artist created.  There are many who have done works in these places.

Just masses of humanity trying to navigate through the halls of the museum chambers.

Masses of humanities trying to get in through this sacred door.

More pictures of the throngs of pilgrims.

Throngs of people.

Us at the Coliseum.

One of the newer buildings in Rome.  🤓

These girls are having fun being together taking pictures of anything moving or old!

Nice pics of the Coliseum.

This guy showed up and just stared at tourists for the longest time.

Looking down on the Roman Forum.

Good pic of what was under the floor of the Coliseum.

I liked the trees in this picture with the Coliseum in the background.

2025 Italy - December - Day 04 - Goodbye Florence. Hello Rome!

 December 5, 2025

Wow, the day in Florence flew by fast.  I personally really enjoyed the time there.  We were up ready to go by 8 AM.  We walked to the Firenze S.M. Novella train station which is the central station.  It was a 8 minute walk from our hotel, the Sette Angelini Rooms.  Our rooms were clean, big and nice.  The only issue was the noise through out the night and due to the road in the morning.  I now understand why they have ear plugs in the bathroom.

We took the 8:53 train to Pisa.  We arrived in Pisa at 10:04 AM.  They are very accurate on their schedules here which is amazingly nice.  The trains we are taking today are regional trains and they have a larger number mof stops.  Upon arriving, we determined where the drop luggage place was.  We dropped our luggage for a €5 per bag for all day storage.   After having dropped the luggage, we determined a bus to get on.  We watched bus 1+ fill up with a million passengers.  But my GPS was telling me to get on bus #23.  So we waited a bit.  Bus #23 was an 8 passenger mini-van!  We were a bit shocked.  But still we had to tap to pay for our fare to get on and only one of could not get their card to work.  The bus driver told her to just get in, all good.  He never charged her.   The driver was quick and soon we were at the site of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  It’s a nice site and you can do many fun things with a camera there and special poses.  I think we spent about an hour and half there.  Denise and Michelle went up the tower while Jeff and I just waited outside.  In the sun, it is really nice.  In the shade, it’s quite cool.  Anyway, after they were through, we used the expensive public toilets and then walked the 25+ minute walk back to the train terminal stopping at a market to get some ‘lunch’ snacks for our 4 hour train ride to Rome.  I am writing this part of the blog on the train heading along the beautiful coastline of Italy heading to Rome, 

It was a 4+ hour trip from Pisa to the Rome Central station.  Our flat is right across from the Termini station.  This station is HUGE!  It is such a zoo.  Anyway, after arriving, we were at the flat in about 5 minutes.  The fellow who is the host met us and showed us around.  The flat has 2 very large bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a small kitchen area.   It will work great.

After resting a bit and unpacking, off we went to figure out how to get to the Trevi fountain.   We did not leave until nearly 7 PM.  My GPS gave me a bus option that I began to follow.  But then it turned up saying that it was 40 minutes delayed.  So I selected another option.  We quickly walked the whole length of the terminal to a public bus station, found our bus, and off we went.  Michelle did get a card found that allowed her the ability to tap on.  It is a Friday night and the city is buzzing.  The Trevi Fountain had a lot of people there wanting to throw coins in…which Michelle and Denise did.  After spending a few minutes there taking pictures, we decided to walk to the Spanish Steps.  Denise and I had never been there before.  It was about a 10 minute walk.  But we were hungry.  So as we walked, we came to a restaurant that looked nice and went in.  Therein we had a nice Italian dinner (pasta only) and booked some tickets to see the Colosseum at 9 AM in the morning.  We booked that time hoping to get to the Vatican Museums by 2:30 as it appeared that was when slots were open.  Unfortunately, by the time I got there, it was fully booked.  Nothing else in the afternoon available.  So we might just be walking around St. Peter’s Square and going into the Basilica there.   We shall see.

After the Spanish Steps, we ventured our way into the subway system here.  We found a train that took us to Termini and we were home in about 20 minutes.  We are all so tired.  And I suspect that we will continue to get more tired.  Hopefully Sunday will be a true day of rest.  

Some pictures:

 

You are going to see a few of these.  I did my best to keep it up!

Picture from our train looking out into the Mediterranean Sea.  Lovely ride up the coast as the sun set.

This reminded me of Dale when he found his 2 liters of Coke.  Jeff found his at the market in Pisa.

Michelle is not going to let this thing grow any taller.  Well done Michelle!

Jeff is the strongest of the bunch and only needs his finger to hold it up!

I think this was the train to Pisa.  Hard to tell.  We had fun training all day today!

Michelle looking down on Denise in the Tower of Pisa.  Isn’t that what older sisters do…look down on the little ones?

Denise got tired of the tower and just wanted to kick the darn thing over.  She couldn’t do it though.  Bad knees I guess.

Nice group shot over looking the muddy river that runs through Pisa.

A good shot of the tower that was built in the 1100’s.

There were 3 other buildings on the campus here in Pisa.  But I’m not sure what this one was.  Library maybe?  I’d have to research.

Inside the cathedral that was on the grounds here at Pisa.

Trevi Fountain.  It’s been many years since we were last here.  Pretty impressive.

The group starting to enjoy Rome at the Trevi Fountain.

This boat thing lies at the bottom of the Spanish Steps.  Who knows why.

A Christmas tree half way up the Spanish Steps.

A good view of the Spanish Steps at 10 PM.  Doesn’t anyone go to bed at normal times?

Cramming into the small elevator here in this building.  I think it has 5 or 6 floors to it.

This was a side street leading off the piazza where the Spanish Steps were.  They were quite pretty…but no color!

An Italian dinner….again!  I’m ready for some Chinese food!