St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. {1/2}

ONE of the things most people go and see in Rome is St. Peter’s basilica, spiritual and political centre of the catholic version of christianity. 

  Dad kept calling it the Vatican, and while The Basilica was in Vatican City but I think the vatican is actually a bunch of offices and such in the back that tourists can’t get to. 

The Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica are way too big to see in a day, especially if you have a cold. 

Graduation

Rome: The Ruins Behind the Colosseum

Out behind the Colosseum are some ruins, there weren’t a lot of signs so Dad and I didn’t really have any idea what we were looking at most of the time, we decided eventually that it was where they kept the animals and where the support staff lived, because there were houses and shops.

Turns out we were looking at the roman forum.
 It’s all a little confusing, because it’s all old, all broken and mostly built on top of older ruins.

There was a big line to get in, but we decided we were italians and just bought and walked past the line. 

I’m not sure what this is, but it’s right next to the Colosseum, looks like it used to have steps going up to it, and drops down pretty seriously just inside the door. 

So, obviously they kept something in there that they didn’t want to get out.

Rome: Colosseum

 The Colosseum: Death Dome of the Ancients. 

  The Colosseum is weird, most of the monuments in italy, the really famous ones, are way bigger than you’d think but the Colosseum seems to fluctuate.

 When I first walked up  I thought “Wow, this is way smaller than I thought it was.” But it isn’t. Not at all. In the subsequent pictures, look for the people who are standing on the ground directly next to it. That’s the real scale.

Panorama: When we walked over to the Colosseum we ended up on a hill with some parked cars, look in the botom right hand corner of the picture.

Those teeny–tiny dots are people who are actually CLOSE to the Colosseum.

Detail: Included, people for scale.

People In Italy

Street Photography of tourists and photographers, but overwhelmingly old italian guys in hats.

Ordering a snack unwillingly.

Stazione S.M.N., Florence

Rome: General

I have never been to New York. 

 But I imagine it has the same feeling as Rome, big and loud and kind of fast paced and stressful. 

I grew up in the country, in the forest in Alaska, One time I visited Chicago, but that’s about as big city as I got. Rome was kind of a shock to the system, especially considering the system had just realised he had a cold. 

 On the train to Lucca Dad and I sat across from this nice young australian couple who were doing eight weeks in Europe, they had just come from Rome, and they suggested a hotel; The Viminale.

It was cheap, and nice, and right in the center of everything.  Definitely suggested.

Portrait: Dad. ALMOST smiling.

Scene: The train station. I Spy: a hobo. 

The Original Grotesque

Before the middle ages, {or “Dark Ages”} the Greeks and subsequently the Romans had a pretty thriving culture, with art and temples and carved marble and things covered in gold, {Like the Catholics! More on that later} but then Christianity went mainstream {Thanks a lot, Constantine} and all this cool old stuff was “Lost” and destroyed because it was “Pagan”.

Fast forward to the Renaissance and Europe is rediscovering all this old stuff, like “Math” and the old stories, which were a lot more popular with artists because Nymphs and Goddesses of Beauty presented a lot more opportunities to carve naked women than the Madonna ever did.

One of the things they eventually rediscovered was Nero’s tomb.

The Ponte Vecchio {and the Vasari Corridor}

This is a bridge in Italy most people know, I had always assumed it was flanked by several similar but inferior bridges and that this is how all the old bridges used to be.
Wrong!
 In fact the only reason this bridge is like this is because the family that used to run this town {The Medicis} wanted to get from their palace to the office without going down on the mucky street with the dirty common people.  So they had a famous architect build the Vasari Corridor on top of the shops that were already there.

Panorama: The Ponte Vecchio

Panorama: The Old Bridge. 

Here you can really see where they built on top of the old shops. 

Florence: Signs

You be boppin’, big daddy. 

Jazz, man, jazz.

Pisa

Pisa is a lovely little college town in Italy, with a river and a hat shop and about as many little art supply stores as you would like, none of which sold my malfunctioning mechanical pencil. 

{It’s very difficult to get a Parker Jotter mechanical pencil overseas. Everywhere had the pen version, but whatever.} Pisa is not a small town, {You couldn’t amble the perimeter in a day, for example} but it wasn’t as big as Florence. We did everything in an easy day trip, and walked across almost the full diameter of the town just to get from the train station to the tower.

There’s a lot more in town than the tower, {or Torre Pendente as the signs will tell you} there’s even a lot more RIGHT NEXT to the tower than you’re expecting, including dad’s favourite church. 

Oh, before we start a word of advice to other pin buyers such as myself in the past:  There are a lot of cool pins in Pisa, but don’t buy them from the little tourist shop next to the tower.

Buy them from the street vendor guy on the way back to the train station, they’re about $1.30 cheaper per for the exact same thing. 

Learned THAT the hard way.

I don’t know who this is, but he’s got an awesome hat and a sword, so obviously he was d*mn lucky.