We get to play baseball!

Looks like I need to adjust Bryant's helmet.  Maybe get rid of the hearts, too girly?  A hand me down from Taylor.  I am so excited that Bryant is now old enough to play team sports!  He played soccer this past fall and now baseball!  He really is having a fun time.  Two of his team mates were on his soccer team, so that is fun to already have friends.  They are so cute at this age.  They each take a turn at bat, no outs and then switch to outfield.   So easy!

 Todd giving Bryant some pointers at first base.

Rome: part V



 On our last day in Rome we started out with breakfast and then some shopping for our family's gifts.  Bry and Tay got official football jerseys and I'd been eyeing these delicate scarfs for Sydney all week and when we finally went to purchase it the color I had wanted was gone... darn!  We had some lunch and then said our goodbyes to Stayson and Sarah who had to catch a plane home to England that evening.  We left the next morning.  We went to a southern area that we hadn't seen yet and saw some more churches and old ruins.  I think there were more scooters on the streets than cars!  They were everywhere!

 I loved these tomatoes!

 These trees were crazy wierd and they were all over the city!  They are like super tall umbrellas or clouds on a stick.  This was the view from above at the Castel Sant' Angelo.

 This is a gas station, just pull over to the side of the road and fill up!  You hardly even have to leave the road.

For our last dinner in Rome we decided to ask our concierge where to go.  We asked where HE would eat as we hadn't had any really good meals yet.  He said, "For me?  Only one place!  Then he told us the name, gave us the directions (which were in the opposite direction from where we had eaten towards the city center all week long), called in our reservations and sent us on.  The best meal of the week!  I ordered fresh made spinach and ricotta ravioli with a butter cream sauce, we had a bowl of olives with the pits still in them, kind of like chips and salsa in a Mexican restaurant.  Todd had a steak with cheese on the side that all but melted into yumminess!  We later found out that it was Tuscan food!  The final report on food is that Roman food isn't that great.  Food in Italy is very regional and varies greatly!  Five days in Rome was perfect!  We werent' rushed, took our time and saw pretty much everything we wanted to see.  You do walk a lot!  Todd had some huge blisters, and my feet were just very tired!  Every night we'd soak them in the tub with a couple of inches of cold water, relief!  We even shared our remedy with some older American men we heard complaining about their feet hurting outside of the Hard Rock Cafe.  Aren't we nice? 



Rome part: IV

 Thursday:  So after our tour of the Palantine hill, our guide asked if we wanted to go on a tour of the Vatican museums and St. Peter's.  He took a deposit and said to meet at a certain metro stop the next morning and he'd take us through... hmmmmm.  He was a really nice guy.  He was raised in Ohio, moved to Rome to become a Father (priest), was in his last year of schooling and decided he wanted a family, married and had children, now does guided tours.  Who better to take you through the Vatican museums than an almost Father!  As you can see we were literally herded through the museums with a headset on so we could hear our guide.  There were so many people!  If you spent 60 seconds in front of every item in the museums it would take you seven years to see it all!  After the museums you enter in to the Sistine Chapel.  There is this huge build up and then you are in this smaller chapel, don't get me wrong it was beautiful.  Michelangelo's painting on the ceiling was incredible work.  They don't allow photos and I didn't know that, missed that part I guess, should've been caught!  It was also packed like sardines, way too many people, it made it hard to appreciate the beauty of it all.

 This is the outside of St. Peter's.  One word:  HUGE!

 The scale of everything is so immence!

 We saw these guys and were stalking them to get a photo.  Finally I went in front of them to get a photo of something else and turned around and got 'em!  Our friend asked if they wanted their photo taken and one said yes, another said no!  I think we started a fight!  There were all kinds of priests, nuns and even these French Friar Tucks all over the place.  I guess they get to go on vacation too!

 Castel Sant' Angelo.  This was a fortress built for the pope, and used in the Angels and Demons movie.

 Remember this from the movie?

 And this hallway?

 The view was pretty cool of the city from the top.  See the little wall heading towards St. Peter's in the bottom right?  That is how the pope got from the Vatican to the Castel and Tom Hanks ran along this wall in the movie.  This was a long day and a lot of walking too.  By now our feet were tired, hurting and some of us had blisters. 

Rome: part III

 I must admit Wednesday was my favorite day!  We went to the Forum.  This area of Rome was the center of the world, according to the ancient Romans. We decided to start with the Colosseum and were approached by an English speaking foreigner who wanted to book us on a group tour of the Colosseum and Palantine hill.  He said he knew we were Americans and that Todd looked like Brad Pitt?  Really? Anyways, he then introduced us to an American girl who took our money, it was expensive, and she told us to wait "over there".  We were hoping she wasn't a con-artist and we had just been conned!  We did watch her and never let her leave our sight.  We did get added to the next tour group, which is the way to go, otherwise you are just on your own with no audio tour or pamphlet to guide yourself!   

 The Colosseum was incredible!  You can see how they have added newer concrete to help hold the old walls in place.  Imagine that every surface was covered in white marble, every surface!  Amazing!  The step below is a remaining piece of marble that wasn't looted over the years.  The passageways in the center were under the actual arena where the gladiators fought, they kept the animals down there.  They are currently building the floor part of the way across so we could see what it did look like back in the day, like 72 AD.  cRaZy old!

 After seeing the Colosseum we walked up the hill to Palantine Hill, where the great palaces of the Domitian's built at the end of the first century AD. Our Colosseum tour guide turned us over to a new guy for the rest of the tour of the Palantine hill, he was an American.  I will tell you more about him in the next post.

 Look at the base of the columns, again you can see how every facade was faced with marble.  One of the Domitian Emperors had every marble surface highly shined so he could see if anyone was trying to kill him.  His wife actually was the one who did eventually kill him. 

 Below the Palantine hill is the Forum area, or the center of the city then.  There are a ton of ruined temples and basilicas, market places and two huge arches in which religious and triumphal processions went toward the Capitol, there is one in the center of the photo.

 This cluster of columns is the center of the world, according to the Ancient Romans. The saying "all roads lead to Rome" came from this spot.

Rome: part II

 Julius Caesar was murdered here.  Theses temples date back to 3 BC, crazy!

 Todd and I are in front of some pretty impressive statues near the entrance to the national museums.  Naked statues everywhere.  There was a pope who decided it was evil to show the male parts and so he had them chopped off, so to speak... then another pope decided to cover the chopped off parts area with a leaf.  So you see some with a leaf, some chopped off and some still there!

 Here is my friend Sarah, she just loved this building.  It is called the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, built for the tomb of the unknown soldier to honor the first king of a unified Italy.  the Roman people do not like it as it is and will always be white unlike the rest of Rome's ocher color.  They nicknamed it the typewriter, the wedding cake, and the white elephant!  We took a teeny, tiny elevator to the top and what an incredible view of Rome!  Wow!  This was the view of the colosseum and part of the forum area in the front.  The forum is the most ancient remains in Rome and I'll get to that in a later post!

 I loved this column, just look at the detailed carvings, wow!  Colonna Traiana.

 This was my favorite church.  As you can see, the exterior isn't that great, pretty plain really.  What I loved was the use of the chocolate brown marble!  It was beautiful and so different from the other marble colors used in all the other churches.  The carved angels on the ceiling were amazing and stood out in contrast to the darker color of the ceiling!