Matt and Janelle in Europe

We arrived in Vienna in the morning after taking the overnight train, then navigated the metro system easily thanks to the detailed instructions from our host, Dan, and the easy maps in the stations. Our train was a little late, so we arrived to Dan's shop later than we had planned. He is in the process of opening a coffee shop near his bed and breakfast, so we were a little confused whether we were in the right spot because his shop's windows were blocked with paper and we weren't sure if it was even the shop he was referring to. Fortunately, he came up to us on the street and welcomed us in.

Dan gave us some complimentary coffee (partly to test out his new coffee machine, we think) and let us drop off our backpacks. He also gave us directions for to St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Vienna Opera House, and the tourist information office and asked us to come back in a few hours when the previous guests had checked out.

Next, we checked out the church, which was far different from the churches we saw in Italy; it felt much more Gothic, reminding us of Notre Dame in Paris. We also continued on to the opera house, which was just a few minutes from the church along the main pedestrian plaza. We saw lots of people dressed in old Viennese clothing trying to sell tickets to Mozart performances, as Vienna was where Mozart lived and composed the majority of his pieces.

Next, we got some information from the tourist office, which was all useless pamphlets until you waited in line to ask for more helpful information, where they gave you some nice maps and guides. We walked to a nearby park (and eventually learned that Vienna has a ton of parks) and saw Hofburg, a collection of imperial buildings. We continued on to the main section of the city, which had a much more metropolitan feel than most of the cities we'd seen, with many expensive restaurants and clothing stores.

We wandered back to our room, which was being cleaned and prepared. We still had a little while to wait, so we walked around the area near our room, which we learned from our host (and almost instantly confirmed by looking at the locals' styles) was the Jewish part of town. We found a restaurant that looked nice and decided we would try to return for dinner. Next, we checked in to our room and researched Vienna a little bit.

We decided to go on a self-guided walking tour that was recommended in the tourist information. Along the way, we got to see a number of Vienna sights, but unfortunately the pamphlet didn't have very much information about each. To deal with our limited information about each city and attraction, we have started loading Janelle's Kindle with Wikipedia articles, which has been very helpful. Along the walking tour, we also passed a brewery and decided we would go there after dinner to try the local beer.

We returned to the restaurant we had seen earlier in the day, and the waitress was happy to see us again. Matt got the local dish Wiener Schnitzel (a breaded and fried piece of meat, in this case pork) with rice and Janelle got Huhnerpfandl (a pan of delicious sauteed potatoes, chicken, mushrooms, bacon, and onions). Both were generous portions and tasted amazing. We also learned from the waitress (and later confirmed online) that unlike Italy, a tip (small, under 10% and often just to round to an easier amount) is more common and expected in Austria.

After eating our late dinner, we walked back across the river to the center of town and stopped outside the brewery. There was a mass of people crowding the entrance (the brewery itself was completely full too), all trying to get a peek of the soccer game that was on the TV, erupting in a mix of cheers and frustration every once in a while. We waited for a few minutes, when everyone suddenly cleared out, as the game had ended. We made our way to the upstairs section of the brewery, which was incredibly hot and stuffy from all the people. Once seated, we ordered a 1.5 liter pitcher of their local lager, which we split while talking and observing the people around us.

After the brewery, it was pretty late, so we returned to our Airbnb room and went to sleep.

We headed across Rome to Vatican City on the metro after waking up and eating a quick breakfast. Our bed and breakfast host was nice enough to let us leave our bags and exchange our room key for a building key so that we could come back into the building even when another party had checked into our room. Once outside Vatican City, we got in the long line for the museum, Musei Vaticani, before it opened. While waiting for the doors to open at 9 AM, tons of people offering expensive skip-the-line passes pestered everyone in line. Once the doors opened, however, the line moved much more quickly than we'd have expected, and they toned down the skip-the-line pitch as it no longer seemed like the line would take forever, which we thought was kind of funny.

Vatican City

Once inside, we explored the various exhibits, which ranged from ancient Egyptian engravings to Belgium tapestries to modern paintings; rather than having a specific theme, such as Renaissance art or archaeological artifacts, the museum was more like a collection of the valuable things that the wealthy Vatican has been able to collect and buy.

We started with the ancient Egyptian section and were amazed at how well preserved the artifacts were. For example, scrolls of parchment that were placed in small dolls and buried along with dead Egyptians were still able to be read after several thousands of years. Carvings and sculptures dating from almost 3000 BC were in better condition than any of the classical Greek or Roman art. There was even a mummy on display, showing the skill the Egyptians had with preservation via their embalming process.

The museum houses a collection of ancient Roman and Greek statues lining a hallway designed and built to showcase them. They're also well preserved, and the halls are equally impressive.

Also amazing were the so-called "Raphael Rooms," which were rooms with vaulted ceilings, with the walls completely painted by artist Raphael. These commissions, among others, were efforts by the various Popes to try to build and grow an artistic reputation in Rome, since Florence was largely becoming the center of the Renaissance instead. These rooms house wall-to-wall paintings, such as the famous School of Athens, with amazing skill in perspective.

We were a little disappointed with the layout and guidance of the museum, though. The map was more like a subway map than a location map, with whole sections of the museum being represented by a small diamond and with disproportional lines connecting each; it was very difficult to really tell where things were in relation to each other, and therefore difficult to know where you could go. The museum also felt very linear, as several doorways were closed off, all keeping people headed in a large stream toward the Sistine Chapel; many people just rushed straight through the galleries to get to the Chapel, not even looking at the other pieces along the way.

Of course, the Sistine Chapel was very impressive, completely covered in biblical artwork, including Michelangelo's famous ceiling. Despite earlier indications that pictures were not allowed, the security guards permitted it without any trouble.

After leaving the Sistine Chapel, we headed toward the exit of the museum, which brought us back outside the walls into Rome. We continued along outside the wall to enter the public entrance of Piazza San Pietro outside of Saint Peter's Basilica. The line to get into the Basilica was long and intimidating, but once we saw how fast it moved, we got in line and were able to enter the Basilica pretty quickly.

The Basilica is huge, with the largest interior of any Christian church in the world. It is ornately decorated with many statues and mosaics, with a number of large domes above. We walked around inside for a while before heading out into the piazza and then back out of Vatican City.

After taking the metro back towards our bed and breakfast, we stopped for some dinner (more pizza and suppli) and to buy snacks before heading to the train station for our overnight train journey to Vienna, Austria.

Train to Vienna

The train was interesting, with half of the cars headed to Munich and half headed to Vienna -- in the middle of the night, the train stops and splits in half! On the train, we shared a 6-bed room. During the day, two of the beds are folded up so that the room can be used for seating. Two of our roommates boarded with us in Rome. One was a college-aged "American" (people always seem to give the unspecific response of "America" when we ask where they're from, apparently unable to recognize that we share an American accent) girl studying abroad in Spain, and the other was a slightly-older Italian guy who was working in Vienna. We chatted with them for a while, trying to learn what we could about Vienna from the guy who worked there.

There were a few annoyances with the train, such as the lights going out for a while and the train workers waking us up several times throughout the night. We also had another girl board in Venice at 2 AM and get off somewhere in Austria around 7 AM. Overall though, the experience was pretty good and we found it surprisingly easy to sleep on a loud, moving train.

We chatted with the owner of our B&B when we awoke, getting information about what sites she liked in Rome. She suggested going to see some catacombs south of the city center and explained which bus to take. We agreed this sounded very interesting, but first we needed to make train reservations for the night train from Rome to Vienna tomorrow.

We had decided to take an overnight train because it only counts as one of our travel days and would be a cheap way to combine travel time and sleep time. To make reservations, we decided to take the metro to the train station, and it quickly and conveniently brought us to the station Roma Termini, where we stood in a very slow line for reservations. It was reassuring to know that we were not in any rush -- in contrast to other times we've needed tickets -- so we patiently waited around for an hour before making it to the front of the line. After buying the reservations, we found lunch at a nearby kebab/pizza shop and then made our way to a McDonald's looking for wi-fi. Unfortunately, the internet did not work, but we enjoyed seeing the giant, fancy, and very busy McDonald's, as well as the two cappuccini we ordered at the McCafe.

We continued north a little bit and ended up at the top of the Spanish Steps, which were incredibly crowded and mostly unimpressive. From here, we took the metro back to our home station of San Giovanni.

Next, we wanted to head to the Catacombe di Domitilla, so we found the bus and, with some help from the bus driver, bought tickets. The bus driver also helped us by telling us when to get off the bus.

We arrived at the catacombs, which were one of many catacomb complexes along "Appian Way," an old road that connected different parts of the Roman Empire. We learned that while the catacombs are often believed to be a series of secretive underground passages to allowed Christians to move and escape persecution, they were actually well-known, officially recognized, and authorized by the government of ancient Rome; that is, they were hardly secretive. Instead, the catacombs were used to bury Roman citizens outside of the main city of Rome, as burying people in the city was against sanitation laws of the time.

The catacombs are several levels of tunnels dug into the volcanic rock. The tunnels have alcoves on either side to hold bodies, with the size and complexity varying depending on the wealth of the deceased. Some of the graves of wealthier people included full frescoes (usually portraying biblical scenes and identifying the deceased by occupation) painted on an arch above where the body was buried, and some of these frescoes have survived over 1500 years to today. We took a guided tour (in English) of these specific catacombs (one of many in the same area) as you weren't allowed to explore the 15 kilometers of catacombs on your own. Along the way, you could see hundreds of fragments of gravestones with inscriptions about a buried person.

As the catacombs were on the southern outskirts of the city, there wasn't much else around, so we took a bus back into the city once our tour was complete. When we got back to our room, we looked online to find a place to stay in Vienna, booking a nice studio apartment in the center of the city on Airbnb.com.

After booking a place, we set out for a late dinner, stopping at another pizza and kebab shop. We ordered a couple of pizzas and tried a snack called suppli, a delicious Roman food where rice, tomato sauce, and a mozzarella cheese stick are balled up and fried. Our dinner was great, and we capped it off with some caffe e tiramisu gelati from a very crowded dessert bar across the street.

We awoke refreshed to a beautiful morning in Rome and enjoyed the breakfast provided by the host at our bed and breakfast. Once we got ready, we left for our own walking tour of ancient Rome.

We started by again visiting the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, which was holding an Easter mass. We continued on to the Colosseum, which was incredibly crowded. We had downloaded several relevant Wikipedia articles onto Janelle's Kindle so that we could read about the various monuments we planned to visit. We learned more about the Colosseum's varied history, such as how it has been used as a gladiatorial arena, a Christian shrine, housing, workshops, and as an artificial quarry (i.e. people took pieces of stone that made up the building up through the mid-1700s).

Continuing on from the Colosseum, we viewed the various Roman fora, which were expansive meeting places and governmental plazas built over several centuries. Most of the buildings are in ruins and are very deteriorated, but some are surprisingly preserved. We found it very interesting how ancient and modern buildings are built so close together.

At the north end of the Forum is a recent monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II, who, in 1861, became the first king of Italy since the 6th century. The monument, already almost 100 years old, is a massive building in the same style as ancient Roman buildings. We were able to climb up several sets of steps and get some great views of Rome.

We walked south, getting more views of the Forum and heading towards the Circus Maximus, an ancient chariot-racing stadium. By now, it was time to find lunch, so we walked along the Tiber River looking for a place to eat, eventually stopping at a couple of small shops. We've found that there are a lot of immigrant-run combination pizza-and-kebab shops which tend to be inexpensive yet delicious.

After lunch, we continued north into Piazza Navona, a crowded pedestrian plaza. Like many of the other piazze, it was inundated with large groups, street artists, merchants, and overpriced restaurants. But it was still a nice break. Unfortunately, around this time, it started to get a bit rainy.

We continued on to the Pantheon, which was probably our favorite monument that we saw today. It's a geometrically-perfect building constructed in 126 AD as a temple to the ancient Roman gods and is remarkably preserved, spared from abandonment and destruction after having been later declared a Christian church. The dome is still the world's largest concrete dome and has a circular hole in the center of the roof to let in both sunlight and rain. Despite its age, the building (especially its interior) is in great condition, especially when compared to the buildings of the Forum.

After the Pantheon, we continued to the Trevi Fountain, Rome's famous Baroque fountain. It was raining and very windy, so we only spent a little while there, but managed to grab a few pictures.

We eventually found a great pizza place where we split two pizzas for dinner. Our bill was accompanied with two small complimentary glasses of limoncello, which was a nice surprise to end our delicious dinner. After dinner, we headed to our room and spent time planning more of our trip.

Today was mostly a travel day, which we spent traveling by train from Genoa to Rome. After waking up and checking out of our strange Genovese hotel, we walked around looking for some lunch before our train arrived. We found a nice cafe and ordered some coffees and panini, then headed for our train at the nearest station (which was much closer than the station we'd originally arrived at).

The train ride to Rome was nice and scenic, taking about four and a half hours and traveling along the western Italian coast. We talked a bit with some fellow passengers (both Italian), which was a linguistic challenge, as always.

After arriving in room, we hiked the short distance to our bed and breakfast, where the host showed us to our room. Our room is on the fifth floor and has a great view of the facade of the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano to the north-east.

After dropping of our gear, we had a chance to explore Rome a little bit. We stopped in the aforementioned church (which was preparing for its Easter masses) and were amazed by its size. Afterward, we headed east and wandered through a park at Caelian Hill, then stumbled upon the Colosseum, getting a chance to read a bit about its history.

As it was getting dark, we searched for food and decided on a restaurant on the way back to our hotel. It was the first meal with which we were disappointed; the pasta dishes were mediocre, especially for the price. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel, where we finally got the chance to update our blog.