R*O*M*E #1

Seeing as how my posts have been kinda text heavy and picture light, I'll let the pics do most of the talking about the Rome portion of our sojourn to Italy this past August...in no particular order... Oh the Trevi Fountain... so beautiful. It is absolutely huge. And randomly placed; you turn the corner of a little alley way, and there it is.

These are all the nice people that shared the view with us. Other than the Sistine Chapel, this was one of the most crowded places of the whole trip. I especially like the guy in the left hand corner. He looks like his name should be Guido, and is your stereotypical Italian guy, puffin' away in 100 degree weather.
Us. We found the guy with the best looking camera in that mass of people and ask him to take our picture. He was from Australia and very nice. What the picture doesn't really convey is just how hot and humid it was. Our backs were completely drenched. My bermuda shorts were clinging to my body. Even in the shade, standing absolutely still, there was constant dripping. That night, there was a ring of salt around my head from the evaporated sweat. I don't think that's ever happened to me before. It is easy to understand why people liked the toga - the less clothes the better! Luckily, there was this right around the corner:
Ohhh, gelato. I'm drooling just thinking about it now. This was one of the things that made that Mediterranean heat bearable.
My lemon is on the left, Joe's cream is on the right. NOTHING is as refreshing. And unfortunately, nothing here matches it. Sadness.

These two are of the outside of the Pantheon, which is one of the oldest buildings in Rome. It was a temple to one of the gods before Constantine converted it into a church.
The inside shot.
Little street performer who was around the back. She really added a lot to the atmosphere. It was very, very nice to be walking around little side streets hand in hand with my honey to the wafting sounds of accordion music.
The Piazza Navona...full of art, people and cafes.
Joe was obsessed with the massive doors on the majority of buildings in the city. They were wood and iron with really ornate knockers (ha ha - sorry, Joe & his dad's juvenile senses of humor are starting to rub off on me), nobs, key holes, spikes, you name it they had it.
A shot of the River Tiber one night as we headed back to our tiny hotel, that was close to the Vatican & St. Peter's Basilica, which you can see the dome of.
I am really lucky that the Colosseum is not a woman, because if it were, Joe would probably leave me for it. I know that this was his favorite thing that we saw in the whole trip. We spent a lot of time here during the day and the very final night of the whole trip. It is SO OLD. It was built around 80 A.D. It is just hard to wrap your mind around the fact of something so ancient, and big and is still here. There's the whole technical aspect as to how did they really construct that with only manual labor? How did they really make the arena flood with water for mock sea ship battles? Listening to the audio guide also made me think about just what an evil place it really was. For the opening ceremony of the Colosseum they killed something like 10,000 people and 20,000 animals.

When I saw this view of the arena, it made me think of Hadassah, from the Mark of the Lion Series by Francine Rivers, and what happened to her there. Many were murdered for their faith there.

It really gets you thinking about the early church. I mean, you're walking the streets that Paul walked. And Peter. And the Caesars. And the great artists like da Vinci and Michelangelo. It makes you feel very small and insignificant.
Well, tune in to the next installment of Rome, where Joe & I got separated at the Vatican for about an hour. True story.
Shouldn't I get a gold star for uploading all these pictures?