Rome, Italy

We arrived at Rome Christmas afternoon and David took me straight to the Trevi Fountain that has several statues by Michelangelo - we actually stayed right by it in a place called Barberini.  After four days there, it really felt like home and I was starting to know my way around.  Still, didn't speak to anyone but David so that was limited, but Rome is amazing!  It's a definite tourist place, shops all over with little tourist statues, shirts, food, etc.  We stayed right next to David's favorite tie place (we definitely bought more for his tie collection), next to a really good gelato place, and even next to our dinner out for Christmas!

So we had our first Italian pasta dinner on Christmas at a wonderful restaurant.  But, we have to tell you that food in Italy is expensive!!  Not only do you pay for the meal, but the bread/appetizers are like 6 Euro, the water 3 Euro, sitting at a table 5 Euro.... we still are amazed and missed the free-ness of America for that part.

Next up was Sunday (Dec 26th) and we took this as a more relaxing day.  My luggage came the night before, and David's Sunday night - so I wore a dress, David his jeans.  He got to see several families and friends in the small ward.  I had a translator there to help too!  We decided to visit the temple site location for the soon to be Rome Italy Temple.  It's a huge, very nice and green lot that I can just imagine a great temple being there.  It's not right in the old city/tourist part, but still in a nice area.

 Above are the gates onto the lot and it shows our LDS church as the property owners and that we started building on the lot this fall 2010.

 Monday was the "pack in as much as you can from the top to the bottom of the old Rome sites!!!"  David had it all planned out and to be honest, I was pretty nervous.  It had and was still cold, but I had my jacket now and hand warmers so it was only my feet that froze.  We started at the Trevi Fountain, then up to the Spanish Steps, down to the twin churches, the 3 fountains, the Parthenon, then to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Rome Forum and the Colosseum.  We walked to all and then took the metro to St. Paul's Church.

The Trevi Fountain - we lived about a 5 min walk from here

The Spanish Steps - there were tons and tons from the bottom to top of city - this was the most north part of our Monday walk around Rome...

 Here we are in Piazza del Poplolo - where the twin churches are in the picture below.  This is actually where the Rome riots were the weekend before we were in Rome...  The flowers above have a story... they were given to me by a peddler who just wanted $$ for us to by them for me - he gave us three and we kept telling him no.  Finally he said they were free but after he took our picture and we didn't give him Euro's still, he took them back!  haha, everyone is trying to get money here as it is a poorer area after the Euro's took over.

 Below are just a couple pictures of the 3 fountains area - Piazza Navona.  It's an outdoor plaza with these 3 big fountains throughout it and lots of vendors put their carts up all around.  This was in the movie Angels and Demons where the one guy almost drowned.

Here's the Parthenon from the outside - they're always maintaining their structures so there's always construction.  The inside is the cool part, if you know history this circular hall was created with a hole at the top and I believe one of the first especially w/out pillars to hold the inner part up!

 Tomb of the Unknown Solider WWII fixture below

 Here's a church artifact - below is David standing above the jail where the Apostles Peter and Paul were when they wrote some of their letters to the different groups of people - in our bibles!

Above is the entrance to the Roman Forum - this is the historic area that Rome has kept artifacts, parts of building structures, etc from "b.c."!  It was amazing to see the wide open area that used to have full buildings, and at least Rome still had some.  Wars destroyed a lot and they tried to re-build what they could.

 These are some of the many cobble stones laid many many years ago...

 If you look closely above you can see where we're headed to... the Colosseum!!  It was great, everyone said it wasn't as big when close up, but I still felt pretty small next to it.  This was their area of the time and they would fight animals, fill up with water, etc.

 And lastly was Paul's Cathedral.  The statues of the apostles were great, Peter held the keys, and each had an antidote relating to them.  And inside we didn't take too many but it's a large church with Paul's tomb, all the past Pope's pictures, and many many drawings.

 

 

 These places were amazing!  My favorite was seeing the Rome Forum with all the ruins and also the Colosseum since I've seen that in movies and pictures forever.  I also really liked the church that is David's favorite - they built it after Paul died and brought his tomb there along with many other church things that seem similar to our day...  We made it back to our hotel by 2ish and crashed until we went back out for dinner and gelato (Gelato every day!!)

Tuesday we bought tickets to the Vatican Museum and spent the day looking at art and the Vatican City.  I can't believe all the art they have in that museum and some of the most famous paintings like the School of Scholars by Rafael.

 This is a picture by Rafael that has to be kept in a very cold room...

 These are tombs found

 Above and below - they have full long rooms with tapestries above, and maps, below

Below is a full wall mural that Rafael did - The School of Scholars - amazing!

 And of course, the Sistine Chapel with full art throughout the room done by Michelangelo - this is Rome's temple, like LDS, except they let visitors in all day.  Kind of strange to me!  But it was fascinating, very hot with the crowds of people, and trying to keep looking up at the ceiling for the God touching Adam's hand, etc...

 And outside of the museum and chapel is the Vatican City....

 Awe.... cute couple

We also saw St. Angelo's castle (above) ... at this point the movie Angels and Demons sure does come to life (we watched that around New Year's Eve and it was fun knowing we were just there!!)  Gelato and dinner again along with the Trevi Fountain and shopping for souvenirs.

David's so cute! Here are some of our favorite sandwich and gelato shops!!...

Wednesday we left our luggage at our hotel (on purpose) and headed to Naples... Napoli for a few days. Its a bit more shady so we decided not to drag our huge suitcases all over the place, it was a good idea.  On to Napoli....