to this...
and later, Jared took it one step further...
they are their father's sons
It wasn't that long ago that I did a post about how my tweener had little need for a phone except to text me and his cousin. Well, things have changed. Is it because he is now an official teenager? I don't know, but now he never leaves the house without it and is texting more than I thought possible. And yes, the majority of the conversations are with girls. That's a whole other post. We even caught him texting while blowing the leaves. He is great with following the rule of us reading his texts and sometimes even suggests it.
The Vatican: we had a tour guide take us around. She was great and we learned a lot. Right above Allen's head is the balcony the Pope comes out on and the chairs behind us are always set up. We learned that the Pope's through the years have collected A LOT of art. They would travel and when they saw something they liked, they would just take it back with them. We walked through gallery after gallery of sculptures and art on our way to the Sistine chapel (loved learning more about it, but it wasn't as grand to see in person as I expected-much smaller than I thought). Allen is standing in one of the galleries that was just full of detailed maps-very impressive.
This is one of the hundreds of sculptures there...this is one of the first to have faces show emotion.
Artifacts: Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and the story goes that his mother went on a quest to collect artifacts from Jesus' life. The things she brought back and now are in churches around Rome: wood from Jesus' crib in the manger, a nail that was used on the cross, wood from the cross, the crown of thorns, the chains that held Peter, and the stairs that Jesus walked up to meet Pilot. Who knows if these things are real or not, but it was neat to think about.
When we went to see the stairs, people only go up them on their knees to show respect. And they pray/meditate while going. We didn't have the time or knees/backs to do this, but we did kneel on the first step and it was neat to think, what if? Pretty neat.
The Forum: something I knew very little about. Amazing to see and learn about it. We didn't have a guide here, but we listened to Rick Steve's tour on our phones.
As we were walking around Allen kept talking about how this is where Julius Caesar walked. I questioned if the stone pathways were the same or newer. Then as we walked along them, Rick Steve's talked about the large black stones we were walking on and said, "you are walking where Caesar walked". Very cool. I took a picture of Allen doing just that.
We saw so much more, but I am tired and I am sure you are too. It was an unforgettable trip!
Our hotel in Rome was in the same piazza as the Pantheon. It is the oldest, most intact building in the world. It was rebuilt in about 300AD after it burned down. Here is the inside. They have church services held there now. How cool would that be?
It is most famous for it's dome. The hole in the top has no cover, so when it rains, it just comes in.
The white building is our hotel, and the Pantheon is on the right.
The Colosseum did not disappoint. It was just as amazing as I hoped. It was great to walk around and in this famous, historical place. It is interesting how similar it is to our arenas of today.
-Learning. I found the kids quizzing each other about all the quotes on our quote board. Hmm...so they are actually looking at them.
Florence- This was our favorite city-the one we could live in. Art everywhere. We went to the Accademia and saw David. This sculpture was the one thing that impressed me more than I expected. It was much larger than I imagined and was just amazing. Photographs were not allowed, but Allen snuck this photo with his phone. You can tell just how large it was when you see the people standing next to it. We also went to the Uffizi Museum.
We did quite a bit of our shopping in Florence and enjoyed getting great deals in the open air markets.
Our last night in Florence we went up to Piazza Michelangelo and enjoyed the incredible view of Florence.
We had a driver take us from Florence to Rome. We stopped at two Tuscan villages. This is the view from one of the towers-beautiful.
