Rome, Italy

Since we know we have just a few months left in the UK, and we want to take advantage of every opportunity to travel and see this beautiful part of the world, we had been looking at our March calendar with some disappointment. Save for a fun weekend planned at the end of the month with our friends the Grizzles, March approached with absolutely nothing on our agenda! Quelle Horreur! So Eric scoured the web and found some amazing last minute deals to Rome - perfect, I said! Sunshine and so much to see and do and eat! Ten days later, we landed in the Eternal City for a quick weekend visit - hurray for spontaneous adventures!

Rome is one of those places that I feel like I could visit every single year and never grow tired of it. The sights are amazing, the people are fascinating, the food is fantastic and the weather (if you avoid the heat of summer) is perfect. We started off our tour by heading straight to St. Peter's Basilica in the middle of Vatican City.


The richest and most impressive church on earth never disappoints me, even on a repeated visit, and I enjoyed being able to point out features to Brooks (do you see the cross up there? can you spot the birdie? where's the yellow window?) and share my favorite bits with Eric. Even behind crowds and bullet-proof glass, Michelangelo's Pieta is still breath-taking (he carved it when he was 24 years old!), and Bernini's altar and bronze canopy in the center don't seem at all out of place - even at seven stories tall! We scanned the markings on the floor, locating the names of other great churches we had visited in Europe & around the world, all carefully laid out to show their shorter length inside St. Peter's vast nave... I also loved seeing the nuns from every corner of the globe - it reminds me that Heaven is going to be filled with every race and tribe and nation. I tried to imagine the church full... it holds 95,000 worshipers at standing room only. I still can't begin to picture it.


After exploring the main floor, we took an elevator and several stairs to get to the top of the church. This walkway rings the bottom of the inside of the dome, and the walls are lined with mosaics that Brooks just loved. It was great to see an up-close glimpse of the largest dome in the world, before attempting to climb it to see the best view of the city.


Many steps, and a little bit of claustrophobia later, here's the famous postcard view from the top of the dome down over the Plaza in front of the church - featuring my two favorite faces! Roman builders and architects are forbidden from building anything taller than the dome of St. Peters - so the view is glorious!


Given that this is the highest dome in the world, it's not hard to believe that it would require quite a climb, but some of the tiny spiral staircases and leaning corridors were almost laughable.


On the way back down, Brooks loved getting his wiggles out on the nave's rooftop. The statues behind them are the ones that look down on the main Plaza over the steps - they're huge, much larger than life. And the late-afternoon light at 5pm was just beautiful!


As we got off the elevator from the roof, we heard music coming from the nave and walked in to find security guards protecting a wide aisle in the middle of the church. The evening Mass was just starting, and we watched a beautiful, noble-looking procession of clergy loop the length of the church before taking their places at the altar. It was a magical moment...


This is the end of the long procession, incense wafting up to the ceiling, bright lights illuminating the singers (usually it's quite dim, save for the spectacular windows), and the chanted song becoming more echo-y and ethereal. It was an unbelievable moment. Can you see the guy near the back with a really really big high white hat? He's just a few people in front of the security man in the black suit. Eric asked if he was the pope. Unfortunately not, but he was clearly the guy in an outfit of honor...


We slowly found our way out to the Plaza again, and gave Brooks a chance to run and play in the area where the crowds gather to the hear from the Pope each Wednesday and Sunday. While Brooks tried to catch a pigeon ("I want to pat it!"), we discussed dinner options and people-watched by the fountain. All of a sudden, I realized I was looking at a vaguely familiar face - was this someone we'd met on top of the dome? Clearly she was an American, but I was going to let the moment pass, when she approached us and asked us if we knew each other. Come to find out, while we didn't know one another personally, she attended our church in Chicago for 4 years while we were there, before moving to Rome in 2008. We had many friends in common, and it made the world feel quite a bit smaller.

When we traveled in Italy with my parents in the fall of 2007, Mom, Dad, Brooks and I visited a restaurant near Campo de' Fiori, whose motto is you eat what we feed you. This place doesn't bother providing menus, or even taking your order. They just ask white or red, still or sparkling, to bring you your preferred beverage, and then the feast begins. Brooks is chowing down on basically the same plates of appetizers that we had enjoyed 16 months earlier - yummy lentils, olives, parma ham... all of it was delish!


This was Nona Paola, owner and Mama of this restaurant. She was just as fond of Brooks this trip as last time, and expressed this affection by bringing him his own plate of home-fried potato chips! I was so glad to have my camera with us. Brooks liked her a lot but was a bit confused by her signature turban.


We started the next morning at St. Peter in Chains, a beautiful old church built in the 5th century to house the chains that held St. Peter. It's also home to Michelangelo's beautiful "Moses" statue (complete with horns, due to a long-ago mistranslation of the Hebrew word "rays"), part of a incomplete set of 48 statues planned for the tomb of a very vain pope.

Eric and I discussed whether we thought these chains were in fact the real chains that held the apostle Peter. I'm not sure we came to any conclusion... Perhaps because of our Protestant upbringing, I think we tend to see these old church relics skeptically. But given that they were being housed less than a mile from where he was actually imprisoned, it seems that they are more likely authentic than most of the highly-venerated relics in Europe. Nevertheless, we could say that Peter's chains were these or some very like them, and it was really amazing to get an actual *visual* on what the disciples experienced for their obedience...


Next up was the Colosseum. Because we did zero pre-planning for this trip (other than hotels and plane tickets) we didn't maximize our time to avoid lines at the popular sights. Instead of waiting in the painful ticket line to get to the Colosseum, we jumped into an English language tour-group that ended up being a huge win. The guides were great, very informative and fun to listen to, and we were able to zip past all those poor tourists waiting to buy their tickets to get here.


It's quite hard to look down into the ruins and *not* think of all of the Christians who died in this arena. The mostly missing floor reveals the underground caves and cages where hungry wild animals were housed until the moment they were lifted up by special elevator, hidden behind "blinds" on the ground floor and turned loose on unsuspecting "performers" - sometimes criminals, sometimes gladiators, sometimes Christians. I can't even imagine how terrifying that must have been - to not know what was going to come out from behind the blind to get you.

This photo was taken by a sweet Baton Rouge couple who were also on our tour. They did a great job of getting Brooks to smile for the camera. Eric and I have an inside family joke about how strangers asked to take a photo for you rarely take the picture you're hoping for. This shot was the wonderful exception!


After racing a few blocks to pick up a speedy lunch to go, we joined back up with our tour company for the second part of the day... a guided loop through Palatine Hill. Standing in the center of the "seven hills of Rome" this area has always had prominence in the history of the city. Romulus and Remus - the legendary twin brothers who would later found Rome, were rescued as babies and raised by a she-wolf. As our fantastic tour guide Hannah explained, beginning as far back as 500 BC, many wealthy Romans built their houses up on this hilltop, and eventually, it became THE place to live for the Roman emperor. Around 70 AD, the ruling Flavian dynasty tore down the enormous lavish homes of their predecessors and smoothed out the surrounding hills to build their family a ridiculously large house. The remains of their palace are still there, amazing bits and pieces which have survived the "harvesting" of materials done by subsequent generations of builders and architects are truly impressive. Our guide said that a huge percentage of the marble found in St Peter's Basilica was originally used to decorate long destroyed palaces up on this hill. Incidentally, our word for "palace" originates from this spot - "Palatine Hill" is the place where the rulers live.

This picture is taken from the top of Palatine Hill overlooking the Roman Forum, up the Via Sacra to the Colosseum. On past trips to Rome, I've spent quite a bit of time wandering around all those rocky ruins below - checking out the house of the Vestal Virgins, the Ancient Senate building, the Arch of Titus, and the main Forum square. After one year of Latin at Brentwood Academy (oh, so long ago) and several Ancient History classes, all of these places still seemed very much alive to me. But I had never made it to Palatine Hill before and it was wonderful to find a "new discovery" in a city that I had already enjoyed so much.


From the back of the top of Palatine Hill, we could see the faint outline of the Circus Maximus - once a dramatic chariot course (picture "Ben Hur").


This photo is for Aunt Sissy. We can't see the Basilica of Constantine (Maxentius) without someone posing for this shot...


After a full day of touring through the remains of Ancient Rome, we decided that what we really wanted was a couple of plates of steaming pasta, so we wandered over to Piazza Navona to see if we could find an atmospheric spot to enjoy some of the best that Italy offers. At the first restaurant, the friendly maitre d' pointed to Brooks, perched up on his Dada's shoulders, and asked if someone was tired. I looked up and realized that Brooks was *falling asleep* with his head resting on the top of Eric's baseball cap. So cute. We did one slow lap to check menus and then went back to the first restaurant where the kind man who noticed Brooks a few minutes before went to great lengths to settle him in for a meal.


He pulled two big arm-chairs together and laid out a half dozen padded cushions so we could make a little bed for him. Brooks curled up on his tummy and immediately started snoring, and moments later the maitre d' came over with a clean tablecloth, to lay over him as a little brocade blanket. He was snug and warm and sleeping happily next to us, while we had our first vacation date night in several months! :)


Once we had enjoyed most of our meal, Brooks woke up and ate a bite before our fun bus ride back to our hotel. The next morning we packed up and checked out after breakfast and then wandered over to the Pantheon to check out Rome's most beautifully preserved interior. Eric had not seen this magnificent dome before and we had a great time soaking it up while Brooks ran around pointing things out and asking - "What's dat!?"

Afterward, we went in search of a few more interesting churches in the neighborhood, all richly inlaid with expensive marble and gilded with obscene amounts of precious metals. We admired the architecture (I mean, how can you not!?) but wondered about a religious culture that put so many financial resources into building more and more grandiose buildings, one right after another, all in just a few square blocks of the same city. It was almost too much - even for me, and I love these old buildings, I really do. Ready for a change of pace, we spilled back out into the sunshine to find...

I mean come on! Isn't this the reason why the world loves to visit Italy?! GELATO! :)


I thought Brooks might break his face, grinning so about his "lock-let" ice cream! And this was before he'd had his first bite!! :) I admit I shared his excitement.


Things continued to get a lot more messy after this photo, but I think his early chocolate smile was just too cute to resist. After this late morning snack we had to delay lunch a bit, but it was oh so worth it!


The rest of the day was spent wandering into more ancient churches - including the Mamertine Prison, which Eric had missed on his last trip to Rome in 1999. This church is built over the prison where the apostles Peter and Paul were held as referenced in the Book of Acts and being there was an incredibly powerful experience, even during its renovation. From there, we went back to the hotel to gather our things, grab a bite to eat, and head off to the airport.

A quick trip, but amazingly packed with important sights, yummy food and greatly appreciated sunshine! I love Italy!!