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GOOD MORNING…

This is going to be a huge post.  And I am going to be honest right from the beginning, I am still overwhelmed by what I have seen.  I have seen the greatness of the human initiative.  It made me think a lot, about how when people put their minds to something, greatness can be achieved.  It also made me sad, thinking about all the suffering that has come out of this beauty.  I will try and fill you in with a few details, and I have tried to group things together, in a chronological tour of what we did in Rome over the last 24 hours, but I really don’t have much to say.  Pictures can not capture a lot of the beauty and, in the purest sense of the word, awesomeness of what I saw.  And if a picture is worth a 1000 words, there is no way I can really add anything by writing.  Let’s start here…

Sebastien bored with the drive.

Chopper waking up as we pull into Rome.

This is my hotel bathroom.  I did not use the one on the right.  I like the ones in Japan that do the work for you.

My shower stall.  The pressure was great, but you could only go for about a minute on full pressure, than the shower overflowed.  Or you could shower at a trickle, for as long as you want.

For some reason, my room which I do not share, is always twice as big as the other crew rooms which are shared.  Plenty of people will end up hanging out here.

Wouldn’t it be funny if that is where the post ends.  I went to Rome and all I did was hang out in my room.  It would be funny, not sure if it would be fun, but I have not left my hotel room plenty of times in the past on tours.  Something about this tour though, we have been getting out and adventuring.  It has been great.  Between Chopper, Heather and I, I think we took well over 1200 photos in the 24 hours we adventured, and I guess we were asleep for at least 8 of those hours, or I guess I slept for about 4 of them.  I really was to excited to see more stuff to actually sleep.  It was like Christmas Eve.  As soon as we got to the hotel, it was a quick shower, put on a suit, you have to dress nice in Rome, this ain’t San Diego, and we started walking.

Oh, and we found where Fellini has been hiding.  I wonder if Tupac lives here in the Spring.

We let Chopper take the lead, figure one person should be in charge, destination Vatican City.  The thing about the walk, is you would come around the corner, and there would be a building, or a fountain, or a set of steps that were so perfect.

How perfect are these two dudes.

I hope they live here.  This is right next to this magnificent steps.

At the bottom of the steps, Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.  Well maybe.

The focal point.

No matter how modern and commercial an area was nothing ever looked out of place no matter how old or in ruins it was.  The only thing that really seemed out of place was me.  I got some crazy stink eye looks from people.  Do I look like a terrorist?

Two things I noticed that made Rome different than other european cities that we have been in, I mean aside for the Roman Catholic monuments and the Roman Ruins.  That is there are almost no bicycles, but a ton of motor cycles and more Smart Cars then I have ever seen, and also that they were not decorating for Christmas yet.  I guess when you are more into the birth of Christ than the selling of the birth of Christ, you don’t really need a huge paper tree covered in plastic shot glasses.  I appreciated that.

We thought this building was amazing.  And spent 20 minutes walking around.

Come around a corner and shit, a castle.

Around another corner, and then you can see the Bacilica of St. Peter.

I don’t know how you can take these guards serious.

I really wish you could walk along the edge to get a better view of each of these sculptures.

See I told you.

It might be the huge video screen that makes me thing this, but…

did they really have blackberry smart phones back in the day, or is this prophetic.

Ok, really now.  Words don’t do much.  THE ENTRANCE.

Holy water.

Mother Theresa.

There is not a surface in this building that doesn’t not capture our attention.

I remember being a little kid and across the street from our house was a church.  We rode bikes in the parking lot, which doubled as a playground.  We would jump our bikes off the steps.  Sometimes we would peak in.  I don’t think I have ever thought about confessional, but for some reason it seemed like it might be the thing to do here.  I didn’t do it, but I wonder if it is like the Obama campaign where sometimes he would actually be the one calling.  Do you think that sometimes the Pope heads down and sneaks in a confessional?  Is that like the lottery if the Pope hears your confession?

We saw people walking around up here, and later we would be one of them.

The final burial place of St. Peter.

This is the list of all the Popes.  First one is 67ad.  That how quickly this religion organized.

On the way around back to start the climb to the top of the dome.  I like the little cool angel on the right.  It really looked like he was say “heeeeeeey!” Like Fonzie.

We cheated, and took an elevator up to the third floor.  This took out about 220 of the 553 steps.  What looked like paintings from the floor were actually mosaics.

People below started gathering for Mass.

Then we found the stairs up.  They were very narrow.

My shoulders touched both walls at the same time, and it leaned about 20 degrees to the right, so I was just kind of sliding along the wall for 300+ steps.

The final stairwell was so narrow that a rope was a handrail.

Sunset over Rome.

My uneducated guess is that this is the Pope’s front garden.

The grotto.

The outter edge of the dome was covered in what turned out to be candle holders.  I believe that at some point they would put their robes in these hooks and walk down the edge, putting candles down the entire dome to light it.  I wish I could see that.

Now they are lazy and use lights.

We lost chopper for a while, so while we were up top taking photos at sunset, he was down below.

By the time we made it down it was pretty much dark.

The castle all lit up.

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped for some dessert and espresso.

And after another shower, walking around in a suit all day requires a cleansing shower everyone jumped in some cabs to go to dinner. Not a bad backdrop to dining.

Jonnie showing off what he shot the site with.  His new disposable camera.

The rain let up as we finished with our dinner.

They were filming a movie at the Coliseum.  So it was all lit up for us.

Chopper suspected they were going to do a jump scene out the window with the spot light.

Mainly because they had a air bag set up.

But in the end, they just shot four takes of them throwing paper into the air.  So if you see a movie with a bunch of paper flying next to the coliseum.   I was there.

But at least we got the lights we needed for some photos.

Although they weren’t shooting here and it still looked good, so I bet everything is usually lit up.

They do have full sized busses, but they also have these.  I am in love with this little bus.  This is what I want for Christmas.

We ended the night at the Gelateria.