A merrier day did never yet greet Rome

This post is about Monday, June 20th, which was my first day in Rome!  Major day in Rome.  We got a really late start that morning and didn't get to our first stop until around noon.  We took the metro in after a very interesting breakfast (I had nutella yogurt and this really delicious orange lemon carrot juice which sounds weird but is really good, and croissants which appear to be typical food for Rome) and hopped off at the Colosseum!  Really it was sort of akin to the moment when you walk out of the Westminster Tube stop and Big Ben is just stretching to the sky above you.  We got off the metro stop and there was the Colosseum just sitting there.  You know, famous Roman architecture across the street from the metro.

We managed to skip most of the line by going to the front and paying to go on a guided tour (you can do the same if you get an audio guide) which was very interesting.  It was really really hot though.  I'd forgotten what it was like to sweat all over your body.  Yeah I know, lovely.  But the Colosseum was really neat.

Me outside the Colosseum.

And David and I inside.  The Colosseum is a very photogenic piece of architecture.

Although did you know that when women went to the Colosseum they had to sit on wooden benches at the very top, while the men sat down below on marble benches.  Yeah.  You have to wonder if any of those "delicate" women ever really did faint from the sight of blood or whatever and fell or tumbled down because the stairs were pretty steep.  Another interesting thing that I learned is that the Colosseum was built in a lake's equivalent of a riverbed.  Nero made himself a lake for his enormous palace so that he could have mock sea battles on it.  Well, he was seventeen or eighteen.  I know several teenage boys who would totally do the same thing if they were suddenly emperor.  Anyway, I thought it was kind of cool to hear that the main reason the Colosseum was shaped the way it is was because it was built in a lake bottom.  

Alright, well we left the Colosseum and walked towards the Roman Forum.  We stopped for lunch along the way to get pasta (I got tortellini) and "italian bread" that was pretty good, and then we got the most delicious gelato of our whole Italian experience.  Quite honestly, this was almost comparable to the cookie cup explosion.  

SO delicious.

Well anyway, we wandered on over to the Roman forum.  My dad kept marveling (rightly so) over the way that there were just all these Roman ruins lying around.  No cataloging, only a simple bar keeping visitors from climbing all over them, knocked over pillars just lying in the dirt, etc.  We found this one section where they were doing excavation work, so we kind of wandered around it and went inside this brick building tucked behind the work.  It was full of all of these statues of Nero and stuff, so we're wandering around thinking about how great it is to be inside out of the hot sun and what a convenient building this is when my dad comes over from where he's listening to the audio guide and informs us that we're standing in the Roman Senate on a tile floor that's been there since the time of Julius Cesar.  The steps we walked up to get into the building are the steps where Romulus was killed.  It was pretty awesome.

We were caught unawares sitting on the floor where Roman senators debated whether or not to attack Carthage.

Yeah, so I totally wandered into the Roman Senate without a clue as to the fact that it was the Roman Senate.  It's still a totally sound and complete building.  (It was turned into a church for a while, so that explains the wholeness of the building).  We went and wandered some more.  Some other notable things we saw were the remains of Saturn's temple.

You can thank my brother for the excellence of the sun in this picture.

and the Vestia, where the Vestals lived.  The Vestals were priestesses of a sort I suppose, but their main job appears to have been to keep the fire of Vestia from going out (Vestia is the goddess of the hearth sort of) and to stay chaste.  Apparently Vestia really liked virgins.  Every year all of the women in Rome would come to Vestia's fire and take some of it home with them.  You know, light a branch and carry it back to their own hearth so that the goddess's protection could extend to their homes.

This is the central courtyard for the Vestals.  

We kept wandering through the Roman stuff after that, eventually going up to the top of the hill and looking at a few more really neat buildings and getting an awesome view of Rome and finding some nice orange trees before we needed to move on.  We got back on the metro and stopped off at this random little square that's a top sight in Rome I suppose.  It was sort of this big fancy hotel/mall with a really neat fountain in the middle.  There was this really old church there too.  I guess that this church used to be part of the largest baths in the Roman empire, although most of them are gone now, so that was kind of neat.

Next we stopped off at the Trevi fountain.  You walk down all of these tiny, twisted streets that are crowded with stalls and people and the occasional car in the areas that weren't pedestrian only and suddenly there's this enormous fountain absolutely swarmed with people.

Yeah, I was making faces.  

We tossed coins into the fountain (over our shoulders) because it's said that if you toss a coin in the Trevi fountain then you're ensured to return to Rome, which is something that I DEFINITELY want to do.

Yeah, so then we wandered over to the Spanish Stairs which didn't strike me as particularly Spanish, but they were pretty neat so we climbed up to the top and had this really cool view of the sun meeting the tops of the buildings around as it set.  There was this big obelisk up there too and the Medici home.  Yeah, they have one in Rome too I guess.

On the Spanish Steps!

Then we kept wandering down the road (all this stuff was in the same general area and NONE of it was convenient to the Metro) to Popolo Square.  We actually ended up above it first where there was this really gorgeous park, but we went down to it eventually.  This is home to the biggest obelisk that we'd seen so far and was the original northern entrance to Rome, which is really the one that counts I think.  Also apparently the sight of public executions for a long time.

The gate into Rome.

Alright, almost done I SWEAR.  We then walked out through the gates to the metro stop only to discover that the Metro closes at 9:00 every night while they're doing work on it.  Anyone want to guess what time it was when we made that discovery?  9:15.  Heck yes.  Luckily there was a bus stop near by, so we figured out the bus system (which is WAY easier than the London bus system just to let you all know) and hopped on the bus we needed.  There was this really really gorgeous Italian man on the bus which made for a nice ride.  He reassured my parents that they were on the right route by showing them where we were on the map when he got off.

Yeah, so we eventually got back to our hotel and sat out on our little balcony area (yeah it was like this private balcony, SO cool.) and ate rolls and apricots.  It was an absolutely beautiful day.  Long and lovely, even if I then had to go sit in the lobby for an hour or so to do my schoolwork.

Whew!  That's the end of a horrendously long post.  I promise that's the longest post I'll ever write.  Luckily most of the benefit is just for me.

A young gentlewoman here in Florence

Alright, onto Sunday the nineteenth.  And yes, I realize that was two weeks ago, but I'm a bit slow I'm afraid.  My days were packed while I was gone, and in America my whole schedule's messed up.

Okay, but Florence!  Or Firenze, as the Italians call it.  We started off by going to church, which was in a rented set of rooms in the middle of a street full of apartments.  Hard to find parking.  But going to church in Italian made me realize how long it's been since I've been to church in English.  Not since before going to France.  The meeting was interesting to say the least.  Especially because there were these two absolutely adorable little kids (this fat baby boy with curls for the first half of the meeting and this little girl with short hair and a light pink dress) that kept climbing up on the stand during the meeting.  Like over and over again.  They'd climb up, the bishopric would stop listening to the speaker and watch the kids instead, ready to jump up and grab them if they fell, and then about five minutes later their respective mothers would sigh, march up to the stand, and retrieve them.  I listened to the meeting too though, I promise.  They were translating on behalf of some other Americans, so we actually heard most of the talks in English.

We only went to sacrament meeting, so on our way to the part of Florence we were going to explore we stopped in at a bakery and bought some more bread.  One kind was absolutely delicious and the other kind was the most flour covered and bland thing I've ever eaten.  Mom was fascinated by the fact that you could just walk into the bakery and buy part of a loaf of bread.  Just tell them that you want half a loaf and they chop it off for you.  Much more effective to only buy the part that you want to eat.

Yeah, so then we went (okay ran) down to the Uffizi museum.  As we went past we saw this really huge church (doma) that I guess I'll talk about first.

Well, you can see me and you can see that there IS a building in the background.  

This church is ginormous, seriously.  And it's just sitting in the middle of town, surrounded by all of these small streets.  I guess that's how they do it in Italy.  We didn't go in (there was a big line) but we walked around most of the building.  They've got a bell tower thing on the side (which made SO much more sense after seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and it's all colorful.  It's all green and red and white, and SO pretty.  I'm pretty sure that it's like limestone.  Except the sad part was that it was filthy!  Really, they need to get a crew in there with sponges to clean the place up.  If they cleaned it up I think it could become (1) a major tourist attraction and (2) the most fabulous church building anywhere.

There.  Now you can see the colors.

Well, as I said we ran over to the Uffizi Gallery, which is a museum in the Medici's old home.  Yeah, cool isn't it?  Because for those who don't know, the Medicis were like THE art family.  Back in the days when art was done because of commissions from churches or wealthy families, the Medicis were that wealthy family.  So the museum was choke full or all of this art that they'd commissioned, plus some stuff that they didn't.  It was  a pretty awesome museum, but I think I liked best the fact that it was in their old home.  The last Medici donated the building and a lot of the artwork.

After we finished at the Uffizi we wandered down to the other museum that we wanted to see and stood in line for probably an hour and a half to get in.  The main thing in this museum (I've even forgotten what it's called) is the David by Michelangelo.  Bascially it used to be out in the main square, but they decided that they needed to move it indoors (preservation and all that important rot) so they built a museum to house the statue.  They then realized that they need something else in the museum BESIDES the one statue, so they put in a bunch of other statue work, including a bunch of the unfinished sculptures also by Michelangelo which was really neat.  People talk about being able to see a statue in the stone before it's carved, and you could totally tell that Michelangelo had that ability.

When we saw the actual statue it was late enough in the day that the sun was streaming through the window above the statue lending the marble a sort of ethereal glow.  It was really neat.  I wish we had been allowed to take pictures.

On a different, amusing sort of note, there was this sign posted on the wall of the museum outside where we were standing in line which read, "Writing on the walls or stones of a public historic monument and in any other way defacing or damaging IS A CRIME punishable by law with imprisonment.  WARNING!  This area is under video surveillance." About a foot below the sign, this is what the wall looked like.

Lots of this was recent graffiti.

It made me laugh anyway.  I find general group disregard for notices of importance to be entertaining.  So obvious that the sign wasn't doing anything.

We grabbed gelato on our way back to the car (it was pretty good, but the Genoa gelato was better) and then drove towards Rome.  Here's another funny sign that we saw on our way.

The two arrows at the bottom are the original sign, showing the road splitting.

We drove through some absolutely gorgeous countryside on our way.  Italy has a very different sort of flavor to it than Switzerland.

Random castle on a hill out the window.

Well, that was pretty much all for Florence.  We stopped on our way to Rome at one of the AutoGrill places that they have at all of their rest stops and I got some pretty excellent pasta.  Gelato and pasta pretty much defined the whole Italy food experience.

Haha, where? In Genoa?

Alright, so this is the first day in Italy!  I had four days in Italy total, and each one is most definitely getting a separate post because of how much we crammed into each of them.

Okay, so this is about Saturday the eighteenth.  We woke up in Torino, which some of you might recognize as the location of the Olympics.  For breakfast I had hazelnut yogurt (that's an interesting experience) and this orange carrot lemon juice that's actually really delicious.  I was trying to branch out a bit.  But the other thing that's in Torino (besides the Olympics which were actually way up on the Alps, some distance from the city) is the Shrine of Turin.  For those people who aren't up to date on Catholism (like me) the shrine of Turin is supposed to contain the shroud (sheet) in which Christ was wrapped in the tomb after he died and before he was resurrected.  But they only show the shroud like once a century or something, so when you go now you go and look at the pictures of the shroud that they've got.  That was in a pretty cool church, and then there was this castle looking thing in the square and whatever the family of power in the area's old mansion house as well.

This is me in front of the family's house.

Yeah, so Torino was pretty cool, but we didn't stay long.  We hit the road and headed out to Genoa.  We stopped on the way at an AutoGrill and got pasta!  These AutoGrills became our favorite, because you stop at a gas station and they've got pasta and fruit for relatively cheap prices.  Freaking delicious.

Anyway, we pulled into Genoa and went to the Maritime museum there.  Christopher Columbus is from Genoa (or Genova I suppose) and it's a major port there, which explains the presence of the Maritime Museum.  It was actually a really good museum.  I felt that it was a lot more informative than the one at Greenwich and that I learned a bunch about how ships worked at that time.  There was also this really neat display on the top floor all about immigrating from Italy to America through Ellis Island.  As I went to Ellis Island just a couple of summers ago, it was really interesting seeing what the Italians had to say about the process from the other side and compare the two.

After the Maritime Museum we walked over to the Aquarium.  The Aquarium was fairly cool, but definitely not the neatest thing that I've ever done.  The penguins were awesome though, and we could see them a lot better than the ones at the zoo.  Plus, I got to kiss a fish.

It's called a parrot fish.  And yes, there is definitely glass in the way.

The Aquarium was definitely a tourist attraction.  My mom says that it's supposed to be the third highest tourist attraction in Italy (after the Colosseum and the Roman Forum) but in all honesty I don't think it warrants that ranking.  But it was kind of neat to see signs written in five different languages.

Wait, so where's the way out?  Oh right, not in England.

Although a comment on the whole English thing.  You know how you can pick what language you want based on the flag of the country?  Well, when you're in Europe it's definitely the flag for the United Kingdom that means English.  Of course, I find myself pointing to it without a conscious thought.

Anyway, we left the museum and decided to go wander through some of the really cool streets in Genoa that were close to the port.  Old city you know.  It was pretty nifty, but the best part is that we got lost!  So fantastic, even if my mom was freaking out a little bit.  We ended up walking in the completely wrong direction and eventually Lorraine got directions from a man that spoke only Italian and French and seemed quite taken with her.  We got gelato on the way (daily occurrence whilst in Italy) from this really awesome shop in the middle of all the mess we were wandering through that the girl who worked there had just made, so so delicious, which kind of stood in for dinner, and ended up walking along/on top of the old wall that surrounded the city, which was pretty neat.  You could really see how the city's built in layers, because, as David pointed out, there's always a church or shops or another apartment building underneath the buildings you're walking past.

We got out of Genoa finally and hopped back in the car and drove down to Pisa.  There's nothing in Pisa but the leaning tower, which is actually a bell tower for this enormous church.  We hopped out and took pictures (yes I got the typical leaning against the tower, it's not on my camera).

That's the tower in the background.  Our camera was having trouble focusing in the dark.

It just so happens though that while we were there the church/cathedral was just about to start mass.  So there were these hordes of people going into the other side of the church, all carrying their candles to go in for evening mass.  It was really neat, and definitely not something that you'd see in normal tourist hours.

After that we hopped back in the car, drove for a couple more hours or something like that and checked into our hotel in Florence.