Rome

I forgot that I had bought these masks in Venice for the girls. The mask were also part of the Magic Tree house books. So I thought Ainsley would like them and of course they always love to dress up so I know they would be a hit. The way they picked got what color was not what I expected though. Ainsley told Abby that she should take the one with gold on it because Wonder Women loves gold and Abby wants to be Wonder Women and Ainsley would take the silver one because it was like what Hawkgirl has and I like her. I don't even know who Hawkgirl is I had to ask my Grammy. I am really out of touch. I do know who Wonder Women is I use to watch her all the time.


Back in Rome we had a very nice hotel here. They also gave us a bottle of wine. It is the first place that really has air conditioning. We had a really nice dinner the night we got to Rome. The next day we went to the Vatican. It spans four miles. We started with the museum part of it and then went to the Sistine Chapel, and last to to Saint Peter's Basilica. The museum was huge and beautiful. I had no idea they had all of that there. Wow is all I can say. I really did not get any good pictures of the Sistine Chapel and they would not have done it justice anyway. I do have a video of it. We were not suppose to take pictures in there either so I was trying to be really sly about taking a video and so all that you see is my face cutting off the celling, which is really far away. When you look at the video you can see I am not very good at being sneaky. It is written all over my face. It gave Angie a good laugh. The Basilica was beautiful. That is were all the dead Popes are buried and where the current Pope would have mass if he is at the Vatican. A lot of the pictures are Angie and Matt's. They took some really good pictures.


The Vatican has one of the largest Egyptian exhibits. I am very fascinated by archeology and so it was really great to see this stuff.
In the Basillica
After the Vatican we had lunch and our first gelato of the day. In the guide book we had it said talked about a walk we could go on and there would be different restaurants and shop to see. My husband was sure we could walk there and armed with the blackberry that has GPS we were sure to find it. Of course no one was aware we would end up walking 8 miles to get there. I am pretty sure I am not exaggerating much, Angie will back me up on this. I think we ended up taking the long route. It was some nice scenery but we were not up for much more when we got to the actual place we were going. Funny my husband did not seem to understand why we were so tired. I wish I could know how many miles I walked on this trip.

If you are a follower of Ancient Rome this was Constantine's House

The Coliseum. It was impressive.

Ancient Rome, the forum. I think David had wished there was more of Ancient Rome left. Considering how old it is I did not think it was to bad. There are walls and builds all over Rome from Ancient Rome. It is so strange to sometimes see the front of a building is really old but the back has been added on. They have just seemed to build around everything. I do not know the exact history of the preservation of Rome but my guess was no one wanted to go through the effort to tear it down so they just Incorporated it. Until they then realized how precious it was and started trying to preserve it, just my thoughts though. I started to think about the US and how I am not sure we will every be able to have any kind of history. We always knock old things down. I think of how much of Rome is old and beautiful. If it were the US none of it would be standing still. It would be prime land that they would need to make a profit. So that is a little hard but I always here about them tearing down old buildings for bigger and better.Apollo's house, it was the only thing that was in really great condition.



This was the view from our hotel.

This was how the pizzas came to you. They were single servings. Between 10 and 12 inches. Most people do not split them there. Between this and the pasta and the wine and the two gelatos a day no wonder I put on weight. But wait shouldn't the 8 mile walks a day counter act this. Apparently not. It is making me long for Italy just looking at it.


There is so much more I could say. I have a ton of pictures so like I said I will try to put a link to them on the blog. We saw so much and it really was overwhelming. Some of it did not hit me until I got home and started looking at these pictures and I think I really got to see that. It is hard to look at it all and wrap my mind around how old it is. I have liked Roman Mythology and Michelangelo since I was in Junior High so I really enjoyed seeing all this stuff. It was funny because I thought the statue of David would be smaller and the Sistine Chapel would be bigger. It was beautiful all the same, but it goes to show you that a book really cannot capture what is really there. My Dad always says this about the Grand Canyon. So true.