Rome

The best news is that our luggage finally caught up with us!!! When we got to the boat last night it was waiting for us. It is so nice to have more than two things to choose between to wear.

Rome was my favorite city. The most important thing for Jason to see was the Colosseum, so we picked a tour that took us inside. First we went to a church near the Colosseum that had three levels. We learned interesting things about how they built Rome, when they were done with something, they just filled it in with dirt and built something new on top of it. This church has been excavated underneath it and shows three levels of churches. It was really interesting to go underneath and see the remains of the the two churches, each new church was more elaborate than the one it was replacing.



Next was the Colosseum, it was cool. They were able to seat so many people (60,000) and the way they numbered the portals and seats is something that we could relate to. The floor has been removed so you could see the maze of holding rooms and elevators that were used to hold and move the animals used in the arena. I tried not to think of all the killing that took place in this awesome building. It is hard to believe that a nation that was so forward thinking in its architecture was so gruesome in its leisure activities.







Next was lunch were we met a family from Chicago that had a twelve year old daughter. The daughter had caught my eye earlier in the day because her hair was similar to Kelsie's and she was wearing a tank top that Kelsie has from Hollister. After talking to her for awhile we found that they both loved dance, texting and had lots of things in common. Her only wish was that we would have brought Kelsie with us, it was fun to talk to her. It made me miss the kids even more, though.

Our last stop of the day was at the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. All I can say is WOW!!! It was really interesting to see the largest church in the world. They artwork is beautiful. Everything is huge, even the letters on a ribbon at the top of the building are over 12 feet high.







We had about 10 minutes to shop and that isn't near long enough. But we managed to find a pretty nativity set that was hand carved out of wood from the Vatican and Jason found a marble statue of a chariot rider. So we managed to delay the bus for 15 minutes while we waited for them to package it all.