Day 7: Leaving Rome

Alright, this is the last batch of Italy pictures I'm posting here. If you want to see more, I'm making an online album at Yahoo Photos. Here's the link.

Anyways, on to the last day. This will be short. We just packed up and had to be out of the apartment at 7:20 when Renzo was picking us up to go to the airport. After everything was packed, I took a few more pictures of the apartment for posterity's sake.


My bedroom


Bathroom


Stairwell leaving the apartment

We made a little stop before heading to the airport, at the top of the Gianicolo hill which has a fabulous view of the city.

Ok with the morning mist hanging over the city, it's kinda hard to see. The camera doesn't do it much justice though. It was cool being up there.


Or is it just mist??? Heeheehee.

Unlike the outbound flight, our departure was relatively smooth, besides the fact that our flight out of Rome was a little delayed, so we didn't have as much time to stand in customs line in JFK before making our flight back home to St. Louis. Once again, we had to practically run to the gate. But we made it ok.

On the plane ride home, I saw this cool "bridge" in the clouds. See if you can see it:


Ok that's it!!

Edited to add: Aw phoo. I was testing my links and the link to the Yahoo Photos may bring up a page saying that Yahoo Photos is closing as of September 07 and they are only allowing existing users to continue uploading photos. First I'm hearing of this...well that's still good for me. I'm gonna finish my album before they close it out. So if you get that page, try the link again and you should be able to get to it.

Day 6: Rome

Our last full day in Rome was spent being driven around by Renzo, our personal driver. :) He picked us up at 11am and first we went to the St. Sebastian catacombe, where we did another underground tour of mausoleums. Not as cool as the Scavi tour, but fascinating nonetheless. It was cool cause we got there right as we were afraid it was about to close for lunch, but they were actually only 5 minutes from starting the next English tour.

Here's the catacombe entrance; I wasn't allowed to take pictures of much else:


Next we headed up to St. John Lateran, the pope's actual parish. Are you surprised to hear it isn't St. Peters?









The Pope's "throne"


Behind the gold bars above the altar are two golden statues representing Sts. Peter and Paul. The statues are said to contain relics of the saints' heads. Wow.


A cool chapel off to the side of the altar.

After St. John Lateran, we were starving and went to another little outdoor restaurant for lunch. This place looked like a pizzeria, but it served gourmet Italian food. Here is my lunch, the fettucine primavera:

Num num num. That wine was pretty fantastic too.

After lunch, we went right up the street to Santa Maria Maggiore, or St. Mary Major. This was the fourth and final of the major patriarchal churches of Rome, which consist of St. Peter, St. Paul's-Outside-the-Walls, St. John Lateran, and St. Mary Major.






After our brief visit there, we headed back to St. John Laterans to see the Scala Santa, or Sacred Stairs, which reopened after lunch at 3:30. These are the stairs that descended from Pontius Pilate's temple that Christ himself was said to have walked up and down several times on the day of his Passion. The stairs were disassembled and brought to Rome, and reassembled here. There are reputedly places on the stairs where you can still see drops of blood. The stairs are so holy you can only go up them on your knees.


We were pretty awed at seeing them but we did not go up.

Next we drove over to Piazza Navona, a huge piazza with three fountains, although the biggest one in the center was sadly under construction. Oh well.




From there we drove over a couple of streets to the Pantheon, the most well-preserved ancient building in all of Rome. It is now actually a Catholic church called St. Mary and the Martyrs.










After that it was time to head back to the ol' apartment.

View walking in to the apartment from the foyer.

We fixed another dinner of cheese and crackers and I journaled again for most of the evening. We had an intereseting escapade with an escaped sock off our balcony and had to construct a fishing mechanism to go after it:


And here is the view of the sunset out our kitchen window:


Next: The return home.

Day 5: Assisi

We were a little late leaving the apartment to catch our shuttle bus that morning, but like everything else in Italy, the bus was late. By like half an hour. So we had plenty of time to catch our breath before it showed up.

Once again, the bus ride was wonderful. I loved sitting and watching the countryside go by. No way would I sleep on a bus during that. I'd be missing everything.

Our first stop was actually a town called Orvieto, in the region of Umbria. We had to take a cable car up to the top of this hill where the town was. (How did people get up there before cable cars??) :) In the piazza where our bus dropped us off was, of course, an enormous church, Catedral y Capilla de San Brizio.





This church is one of 3 important Gothic-style cathedrals in all of Italy, our tour guide explained, because in this church a cloth on which a Eucharistic host was seen by a priest to miraculously bleed on is enshrined. You can read the story here.

We didn't have much time to explore the town. We were dropped off, given an hour to explore the area, and then we were rushed back onto the cable car and back on the bus.

The bus ride through Umbria from Orvieto to Assisi had some of the most sweeping, majestic, stunning views I'd ever seen from the road. Our bus winded around hillsides with valleys that gaped beneath us and hilltops that towered over us, covered with lush trees and some rocky cliffs. We passed a huge dam at the end of a man-made, yet still beautiful lake. I could not even attempt to take photos of most of this, as it would not have been done justice, but I did grab a snapshot or two as we drove past some vineyards on the shores of the lake.

Seriously, given Tuscany or Umbria, I'd take Umbria, from what we saw of both.

Before we arrived in the town of Assisi, we stopped in a ceramics factory (read: tourist trap) because this area is apparently famous for ceramics. I bought myself a goblet to take home and add to my collection.

We finally arrived in Assisi, and I know it's gonna take me forever to decide which pictures I want to show you all here, because the whole town was picturesque, and every time we turned another corner or looked down another street we wanted to take another shot. Beautiful little town. I'm not gonna skimp on pictures here...


A view of Umbria from an Assisi rooftop


One of the many archways

Other views around town:







This is the Basilica of St. Clare. The saint's incorrupt body is exhibitied inside, but they put a plaster mask over her face.


I believe this is Rocca Maggiore, a fortress on the outer wall of Assisi. Yay for castles. :)


Some little decorative birds in front of the Palazzo del Capitano dei Popolo, in the Piazza del Comune, where we stopped for a little shopping/gelato break.


This Pantheon-ish temple is the Tempio di Minerva, which is another pagan temple-turned-Catholic church.


Here is the inside of the Temple. Gorgeous.

More views on the way to the Basilica of St. Francis:



(no we didn't have to climb these stairs... just a sidestreet) :)





And finally, the Basilica of St. Francis:




St. Francis himself is entombed inside the church. Very holy place.

Our tour bus was parked close to St. Francis, so we got back on the bus and headed off shortly after. I grabbed a few pics from the bus:

(can't help taking a shot of a little piece of home in Assisi) :)


(I think this is a view of Assisi as we were leaving it, but I'm not sure)

We finally arrived back in Rome and drove around the city a bit dropping people off at various stops. I grabbed a few city shots:

A Metro stop


The fountain in the Piazza della Repubblica


Haphazard traffic in the Piazza della Repubblica


Our stop at last, in front of the Hotel Columbus.

We walked home from there, through St. Peter's Square again (eh, we had enough nighttime shots of it, now we could just stroll through like old regulars) and back down the Via Porta Cavalleggeri. We stopped to pick up some sandwiches to take home and I took this pic of a cute trashcan in front of a gelateria as we waited:


Once home, we ate our sandwiches and I stayed up to write in my journal. Snapped a few photos around the apartment when I took breaks to rest my hand:

Our living room


Living room/foyer


A view of the kitchen past the roses that we brought home Monday night in a wine bottle vase.

Next: Another day exploring the Eternal City.