Occhio Alla Macchina!

It was just about this time last year that Dave and I returned from a business (for him) and pleasure (for me) trip to Rome.   I absolutely loved Rome.  Absolutely.  Loved.  It.  I’m usually a lie-on-the-beach-no-I-don’t-want-to-go-to-a-museum-move-it-you’re-blocking-the-sun kind of person, but this…was amazing.  And since I didn’t blog my photos last year…and since I’ve been wracking my brain to come up with a blog topic in the middle of this barren and frozen wasteland of a cul-de-sac…

Well…

Would you like to see my vacation photos?  You would?  Aw, gee, have a seat, let me open up the album (don’t worry, there aren’t that many photos and you can always click on that little X in your upper right hand corner if you get bored).

Our hotel was about ten feet away from the Pantheon.  Here is the outside (of the Pantheon--not the hotel!): 

But look up when you get inside!  That circle is actually an open hole in the roof!

While Dave was at business meetings, I walked all around Rome, either alone, or with some of the other wives on the trip.  I got to use some Italian, though the Italians rolled their eyes at me while I painfully worked my way through a sentence then started  talking to me in English.    Hmph.

Anyway, I went to a few art museums and also walked around and checked out places to take Dave later.  Here was one we came back to:

Had the Coliseum been built in the U.S. it would have been razed long ago for a better sporting arena with artificial turf.

Here’s Dave inside.  Do you see what looks like a maze on the floor?  That's where the Romans kept the tigers or elephants or prisoners their gladiators were about to fight.  The area is open so we can see the detail, but would have been seen as only a floor back then:

The Vatican was definitely a highlight.  Duh.
Here we are inside:

Do you see all the marble?  Flash photos were totally allowed inside St. Peter’s Basilica because there is no paint anywhere.  It’s all marble or mosaic tile.  All of it.  Now look up at that picture again now that you know that.  Yes!  Even those circular "paintings" aren't paintings.  They are tiny pieces of tile.

Here we are up in the cupola (the tippy top of the cathedral) looking down at St. Peter’s Square:

And look!  An illegal picture of Da Vinci’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel (no photos allowed…I turned off my flash and sound, held my camera waist-high, and hoped for the best).  Do you see the famous hand of God coming across to give Adam life to the left of center?:

So many more things to see and do in Rome.  We (well, I) ate a lot of gelato (I ate 1-2 flavors a day, and decided Rice and Nutella were my two favorites), visited an incredible number of churches (we arrived on a Sunday and decided we would go to mass. I joked to Dave, “I wonder if we’ll be able to find a Catholic church?”  Well, we attended mass at the church that was 10 feet in the other direction from our hotel…there definitely wasn’t a problem finding a Catholic church!)

We did some shopping, ate at a different mom and pop restaurant every night, bought panini--which just means sandwich in Italian--from outdoor carts, rambled through Rome’s ancient ruins, climbed the Spanish Steps, enjoyed a ridiculous amount of limoncello and prosecco and survived the traffic…

Okay, I have to tell you the secret to surviving Rome’s traffic.  If you walk out into the street in Rome and look straight ahead of you, making no eye contact whatsoever with any drivers, they will screech to a halt faster than you can say “Mamma Mia!”  But,  if you look at the drivers and they know you know they are there, they will barrel on through.  It freaked Dave out a little, because I got very good at just walking out onto and across streets filled with an alarming number of speeding Smart cars.  He kept grabbing my arm and saying, “A car’s coming!”  Dude.  Don’t look at the car.  And you will be fine.

Besides, I totally think I could hold my own with a Smart car. (Dave took this photo for Jack who loves Smart cars and his Mama, but it certainly did come in handy for proving my point...)

We also visited the Trevi Fountain numerous times as it was within a 10 minute walk of our hotel. 


Every time we visited, we threw in our coins.  According to legend, this means we’ll be back again someday. 

Oh, how I do hope so.

Well, thanks for visiting and looking at my Rome photos with me, I hope it wasn’t too boring.  If you have time, I’ve got another set of photos from our Franklin Institute in Philadelphia visit…317 pictures of the kids with every exhibit!  Hey!  Where are you going?  I’ve got a really cool shot of Ben in the huge heart! And Maddie eating lunch!  And a funny one of Dave and Jack pretending they’re picking Ben Franklin’s nose!
 
Okay then!  Maybe some other time!