… Is Carmen Sandiego!
Well, I just created a shiny, new category for travels, which will be closely linked with photography, if I had to guess.
Ed and I went to Italy for 2 weeks (well, I was there 15 days, he was only there for 10, but oh well). It was an amazing trip. I arrived on the morning of Saturday, July 22nd, and promptly went to my hotel to drop my luggage off. After fighting with an elevator (lift) even smaller than this one, I went off to San Pietro to chill for a bit, and try to catch up with Laura Newman who was in Rome for the same day. I was running too late to catch her, but I tried in the two most obvious places:
- The Blessed Sacrament chapel in San Pietro
- The gelato place nearest to San Pietro
But that was to no avail. So I chilled in the Blessed Sacrament chapel for a while, and then went home to crash. There weren’t any pictures of this day, mainly because I’d been to San Pietro several a few times before.
Day 2:
Ed Arrives. I catch up with him at Stacion Termini (Rome’s Central train station), and we go through the same luggage song and dance. This time though, we start heading over to probably my favorite church in Rome, San Giovanni Laterino (St. John Laterine), which is actually Rome’s Cathedral. Here I grabbed Sunday Mass (in Italian no less), while Ed shuffled around taking pictures. I did get a few before this of the statue of St. Francis ‘holding’ up the walls of St. John Laterine.
And then we decided to head towards the Colleseum. But there was a small snag in our plans: I got us lost.
Have I mentioned that Rome was FREAKING HOT? It was around 95-100 F in the sun.
It turns out that there is a huge difference between Via San Geovianni Latrini and Via San Geovanni Latrino, which happen to intersect 2 blocks from Basillica San Laterino. I chose the wrong one, and we get quite lost. Turns out we were walking around the outer walls of what’s now called ‘inner Rome’ or ‘Tourist Rome’, and eventually meander by Circus Maximus, and the temple of Hercules, before we make it to the Colleseum.
But we did see a burned out “Smart” car, so that was something.
We hooked up with this organization called Romaround Tours to jump ahead in the queue to get into the Colleseum, and to get a guide to boot. They were a little expensive, but they did a really good job. Turns out that only one Christian died in the Colleseum… St. Ignatious, the Bishop of Turkey. All the ‘other’ martyred Christians were killed in the Circus Maximus, or the Circus Calligula (where St. Peter was killed).
After this, we broke away from the tour for some extra pictures, meandered to the Roman Forum, and then back to our hotel for dinner, and a well deserved rest.
Here are all of my pictures from what I called Day 1 in Rome.
I’ll blog some more later about this. But as a teaser, we went to Florence next, and Ed has some camera trouble.