Rome, Italy (part 2)

Fountain of the Four Rivers (Danube, Ganges, the Nile and the Rio de la Plata) in the Piazza Navona

Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed this fountain. Legend has it that the River God on the right is cowering because he is afraid that the church of Sant'Agnese will crumble on him. The church just so happened to be designed by his rival Borromini. However, the fountain was years before the church was built...ha ha.

Church of Sant'Agnese...the legend goes on to say that the woman statue on top of the church is turning her head away from the fountain because of it's ugliness. Again this was all just a legend we were told. 

Old Roman streets now below the city

Flag of the Vatican City...it is it's own city within Rome

View of St. Peter's in the distance

Not sure if these chairs are out there every day, but we visited the Vatican on a Wednesday and the Pope had given his audience that morning. The Pope, however, does not give his audience from the balcony you see in this picture. He gives it from the balcony of the Pope's apartment.

View of the Vatican from the entrance to St. Peter's

Most of the people you see in this picture are waiting in a 2 hour line in the rain just to get tickets to go inside St. Peter's.

The Pope's apartment

Michelangelo's first sculpture resides inside St. Peter's

The letters you see on walls are actually 2 meters tall. Everything is so proportional inside that you can't tell. Truth time...I thought the tour guide said 12 ft, but I googled to make sure and everything was saying 2 m or 6.6 ft. Guess I was so intrigued by everything and was busy trying not to get lost in the sea of people I mis-heard her.

Literally a sea of people!! This is walking out of the church and into the "lobby" area.

The Basilica is called St. Peter's, however, Pavlvs (Paul) is written more than Peter.

Vatican guards...I'm assuming these cape like things they are wearing are rain coats and that they have their crazy uniforms on underneath :)

That's all folks!! I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I tried my best not to overwhelm y'all with too many...ha ha.

Rome, Italy (part 1)

Roman ruins

Colosseum...over 5 million people visit it a year! If I ever get a chance to go back to Rome, I definitely want to go inside!!!

Found out from our tour guide that unlike the movie Gladiator, real gladiators did not fight to the death. They were admired like some of our football players today. If you wanted a gladiator to fight to the death, you had to pay that gladiators owner a lot of money for his future loss.

Fontana di Trevi

Our guide told us if you throw 1 coin in the fountain you will return to Rome, 2 coins and you will find love and 3 coins and you will get divorced...ha ha...I think she made up the 3 coins. All the coins in the fountain are collected and given to charity. There are lots of police around to make sure you don't even put a finger tip in the water!! Talk about strict!!

Really cool statue...I can't imagine how long it took to carve all of that

You can tell that the building on the right is much older than the other two buildings in this picture because of how small and how few windows there are.

Pantheon

The dome of the Pantheon is one piece!! Unbelievable!! There is also a hole in the top where rain and light comes through.

A single rose laid by someones grave inside the Pantheon

The columns on the front of the Pantheon are 1 piece as well. Somehow they were able to transfer these and get the standing without them being in sections...they had so much knowledge back then and sadly it died with them.

Sorrento, Italy

Those lemons were the size of my head!!! No special effects here...they are really that big!

Fruit stand...take a look at the tomatoes and how they are all indented compared to our mostly dent free from ones from the grocery store.

View from the bus on the way to Sorrento

Beautiful houses built right on the side of a cliff

Fresh fish! Reminded me of Seattle

We had about two hours to kill in Sorrento before lunch so my parents and I sat by the water and admired the views.

I'm pretty sure this was an apartment, but what caught my interest was everything hanging...so pretty!!

Random melted clock in Sorrento

The farm where he had lunch. We got to see them make fresh mozzarella and then we got eat it a few minutes later. It looked so good that I was happy to take my dairy pill to be able to try it...ha ha...let's just say the food in Italy was pretty good, but it's not a great diet for someone who can't eat cheese or a lot of marinara sauce...ha ha...I have problems

The smallest island in the world...Bikini Island!! ha ha

Pompeii, Italy

 The amphitheater in Pompeii originally called a Spectacula

View from the top of the amphitheater...the large rows on the bottom were for the VIPs

Streets/Ruins of Pompeii...All of these were little shops that were buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius

Stepping stones used to cross the street so they wouldn't have to step in their own waste. While that may sound gross, it was actually a pretty advanced sewage system at the time. All the waste would flow into the streets and would be flushed out by fountains that continually over flowed.

Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background

Pompeii

Yes that is a real human. When the cloud of ash exploded, it buried everyone alive under ash and mud and created molds of each individual. We were told that this man's skull is cracked because when he breathed in the hot ash it exploded his brain therefore cracking his skull.

All the "treasures" that have been excavated 

Another side of the city of Pompeii

Barcelona, Spain - Gaudi Tour part 2

After La Sagrada Familia we went to Park Guell which also housed many of Gaudi's designs like this snake like bench that also felt amazing to sit on.

These two houses looked like ginger bread houses straight out of the story of Hansel and Gretel. It would have been really interesting to know how Gaudi thought of all this stuff way back then

Another one of his designs.

Since we were in Barcelona on a Sunday we were able to witness live music and dancing after a church service.

The guide told us that if you walk through this door you are supposed to place you hand on the gold hand for good luck.

According to our guide...after Christopher Columbus discovered America, he came back to Spain and climbed these steps to tell people of his discovery.

For lunch we went to a local restaurant and tried some authentic pallea...yummy

View from our balcony...this hotel definitely stuck out from the rest of the scenery

There were lots of sail boats out this day, but I kept taking pictures of these two. Plus the color of the water is just so mesmerizing.