Rome (day 5 and 6 and 7)

Saturday we headed to the Vatican to hear the Pope speak.  It was kind of neat, even though we’re not Catholic and I couldn’t understand a word he said, except for the sentence or two he said in English.  I was shocked at how old he was.  I guess I knew pope’s are old, but not THAT old.  It amazes me that they put someone that old in charge of a denomination that big, but I guess that’s why the Catholic religion doesn’t progress much.

Heading to the Vatican with the throngs of people.

Abbie’s highlight (okay, and maybe mine too) of this day was touching the horses.  She’s definitely my kid.  She LOVES horses.. and dogs and cats and anything else that’s furry.  Any time she’d see a horse, she’s start yelling “Horse! Horse!  Touch horse!  Touch horse!  Peas! (Please) Peas touch horse!”  And she could spot the things from like 3 blocks away.  Whenever possible, we’d detour so she could touch the horses and she loved it.  She was a little hesitant when we got up close, but she did touch them.

There’s the Pope.  Can you see him way on in the top floor, 2nd window from the right?

Next we headed to the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls, which is one of four papal basilicas of Rome.  Ryan gave us a tour of it.  It’s interesting seeing these huge churches and Basilicas, but they seem so excessive and extravagant to me.

We also headed to St. Mary Major Basilica after that, but Abbie was super tired then and was melting down so Mark and I headed back to the apartment while everyone else stayed in toured the church.

On Sunday, we wanted to wander around so we split up from everyone else.  The bus was crazy crowded and I was glad we were wearing Abbie because she would have been trampled otherwise.

These are ruins that were by the tram stop we used most, and they’d turned them in to a cat sanctuary.  It was pretty neat and Abbie liked looking at the cats.

We first headed to the Church of the Capucchin Monks, but we couldn’t take pictures there.  It was neat though.  It’s chapels in a church that are decorated by the bones of over 6000 monks.  Kind of eerie, but fascinating too.  They took the skeletons apart and plastered the bones on the walls in elaborate decorations.  And there were some whole skeletons around too.

After that we headed to Trevi Fountain, which was packed, as usual.

Abbie had a wonderful time throwing coins in the fountain and playing in the water.

And she saw a horse on our way out so we had to stop and let her touch it.

We passed this obelisk, which tells the story of someone, but I can’t remember who.  Maybe Julius Caesar?

We passed the Pantheon, but didn’t go in since we’d been there before and there were too many people.

And we passed this fountain and had fun taking pictures by it.

And we passed Piazza Navona, where a carnival was being held, but we didn’t walk through the carnival.

On Monday, we all went on a Scavi Tour of the Vatican, except for Ryan, who was kind enough to watch Abbie for us since you had to be older than 15 to go on the tour.  It was pretty interesting.  Apparently there was a necropolis where the Vatican now stands and we got to go underneath the Vatican and see the excavations they’re doing.  We got to see the place that St. Peter was supposedly buried.

Afterwards, we took a quick run (quite literally since I was chasing Abbie) around the inside of the Vatican and then we came outside to wait for others.

We turned Abbie loose and let her run around the Vatican Square more and she had fun, as she usually does when she’s not confined.

After the Scavi tour and lunch, we split up from everyone else again and this is where the bus incident happened that I posted about before where they didn’t let us off the bus at our stop.  But it gave me a chance to take a few more pictures so that was good.

Here’s a few more pictures of the cat sanctuary.  See the cats sitting on those white rocks?

Overall our trip in Rome was fun, but I’m glad to be home.  Abbie is slowly getting back to her normal self and we’re getting settled into our normal routine, just in time for Mark to leave… Yay.