The flight was really long. We went Seattle to Philadelphia and then Philadelphia to Rome. The flight was 14 hours long. My Dad and brother were already at our apartment. Our apartment overlooks a huge market place; our terrace is growing flowers, small trees, lemons and pomegranates. My Dad and brother had been there for a week already. They were at Pompeii. My Dad is working in Rome, he teaches architecture at UW and he is teaching a class here. We went to a gelato place that had 129 different flavors, 21 of them were different chocolate flavors. I visited the Pantheon today; it is a temple the Romans made to worship all of their many gods. It was built almost 2000 years ago. It is a huge dome with columns in the front, the top of the dome has a large open circle, and my dad was inside when it started hailing once, since there was no roof the hail just fell in.
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| Santi Luca e Martina | Lion Sculpture from Egypt 5000 years old | carving that fell off temple of Saturn | base of arch of Augustus |
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| the colosseum | the colosseum | Temple of Antoninus and Faustina | Temple of Saturn |
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| Cat Sanctuary | Cat Sanctuary | Cat Sanctuary | Cat Sanctuary |
Today I went to the Forum and Colosseum. On the way there we walked past the steps where Julius Caesar was murdered. It is now a cat sanctuary, there are about 50 different cats that were stray, and then brought to the sanctuary. They were really cute. In the Forum there were lots of different temples. There was one that was gigantic; it was called the Basilica of Maxentius. I did not expect the buildings to be so big; it seems impossible that they could be made in ancient times. The Colosseum was huge too. Under the floor there were tunnels and arches, this is where the Romans kept the animals and prisoners before they would fight the Gladiators, now the floor is gone so you can just see the tunnels and arches underneath the old floors. The temples were made to worship gods, goddesses and Roman emperors and kings. There is a HUGE storm with lightning, thunder, rain and huge gusts of wind!!!!
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Trevi Fountain
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San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane
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Santa Maria degli Angeli
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Santa Maria Maggiore
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Santa Maria Maggiore
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Today I went to a couple of churches, the first one was a small church called San Carlo Alle Quatro Fontane. Then we went to a church called Santa Maria Degli Angeli. It was originally the ancient baths of Dioclitian; Michael Angelo designed it about 500 years ago. The last one I saw was called Santa Maria Maggiore, it was the biggest one we saw today, the ceiling was painted with gold and the columns were all different kinds of marble. There was lots and lots of gold everywhere. It was built 1700 years ago; it has been remodeled ever since.
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Hadrian's Villa, Maritime Theater
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Hadrian's Villa, floor
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Hadrian's Villa, Caryatids
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Me with Toby, one of the teachers' dog
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Villa D'Este
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Me at Villa D'Este
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Villa D'Este, Avenue of 100 fountains
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Villa D'Este, fountains
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Today we went to Tivoli and visited Hadrian’s Villa and the fountains at Villa D'Este. Hadrian was an ancient Roman emperor. He was interested in architecture and he built the Pantheon and other Roman buildings. We visited his country home, it was a huge palace with pools, huge tubs, statues, theatres, libraries, pavilions, a gym, a fire station, towers, and other things. There were 2 sets of baths. They both had a cold tub, warm tub and hot tub; the hot tub was a little over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a place for exercise right in front of the tubs, you would first exercise then you would go to the tubs, all of the floors were tiled, each room had a different design of tiles. In the ponds and canals there were fish and turtles. There were tunnels where the slaves would travel from room to room; since they were slaves they were only allowed to be seen by the emperor very little, the emperor was considered kind of like a god. After that we went to the fountains of Tivoli. They were amazing and there were a lot of them. One of my favorite ones was called, “The avenue of a hundred fountains” it had a hundred jets down a long path with trees, bushes, moss and other plants. There were a lot of other cool fountains here.
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Bocca della Verita
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Spanish Steps
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Today we went to lots of places around the city of Rome. First we went to a church called Santa Maria in Cosmedin, we got to put our hands in a sculpture called Bocca della Verita. Supposedly if you tell a lie your hand will be bitten off. After that we went to the Circus Maximus and to the Spanish Steps and walked along the Corso, which is the major shopping district in Rome. There were live mannequins modeling underwear in the Sisley department store!
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Via Appia Antica, biking past sheep
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Sheep
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Via Appia Antica, ancient tombs
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Via Appia Antica, biking
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Today we went on a bike ride on Appian Way, outside of Rome. It was a 4-mile bike ride. We went past a field of sheep. They were very cute.
We went to a mass at Santa Maria in Trastevere. The mass was not very different than the masses here. Some differences were that that the mass was all in Italian, the people in the church stood and sat whenever they wanted, there was no time when they had to stand or had to sit. During the Eucharist the Priest dipped the host into the wine instead of having the wine separately. It wasvery interesting to see how they did it in Italy.
