Followed by a 7.5-hour flight to Munich…

…annnnd a third flight from Munich to Rome.

All together, it took more than 30 hours to get here!

It was so weird to hear/see the standard airline safety info in German.

First time seeing a European country! First thought: wth? It looks a lot like Wisconsin!

In Munich, we got our first-ever passport stamps!

Waiting for the final leg of our journey. Midday in Germany, but it felt like 4am to us.

We made it!

And so did our luggage. lol.

Our hotel for the day, Waldorf-Astoria-Rome Cavalieri….

Where we met up with Gina and Amy. Salut!

Guess who’s suddenly of legal drinking age?! 😳

A few pics from the amazing hotel…

(Yep. Even the bathroom was cool.)

View from Gina and Amy’s room. I had to zoom in quite a bit for this one, but you could actually see the Colloseum and Pantheon from their balcony!

More shots from their balcony:

However, I did remember that, in Italian, it’s called, “Piazza del Popolo” (thank you, Dan Brown and Tom Hanks)

And, I actually spelled it correctly in Italian (thank you, Apple Maps)

According to Juliano, Rome is often called the City of Obelisks. Who knew? Most of them are copies of structures that collapsed or were destroyed long ago, but some are originals.

Juliano must’ve been right because there are Obelisks everywhere in Rome. Many were taken as tokens from other countries following victory at war. \240I believe the obelisk above came from Greece, and it’s one of the oldest originals in Rome. More than 2,000 years old. Crazy.

I took these next few pics between tour stops. The streets in Rome are super narrow. Check out how close the car is to those SIDEWALK-cafe tables in the 3rd photo below…

On to Stop #2: The Spanish Steps | Piazza di Spagna

I blame jet lag, but the history of this stop was a bit fuzzy to me. For some reason or another, someone constructed this building with a gajillion steps. It’s by… or maybe it actually is…(??) the Spanish embassy…..

….to the Vatican….

…even though it’s in Italy, not Vatican City.

I think.

Idk, the whole thing confused me, but, whatever, it was a whole bunch of old steps plus fancy stores, and a cool fountain.

I guess it must still be the actual embassy because it had an active military presence. \240

Upon choosing to get out of the vehicle to take pictures, Amy commented: “Soooo, I see we all feel just fine about the MACHINE GUNS?!” Lol.

Another obelisk

Spanish embassy to the Vatican. (I think..)

The cool fountain

Stop #3: Trevi Fountain

It’s A LOT bigger than it looks in movies.

Euros thrown! Wishes made!

The Interweb says they make about 3,000 euros a day from coins thrown in the fountain. The money is used to support a local food pantry.

Speaking of food, we had our first authentic, Italian pizza!! It was amazing!

These cobblestones are on the roads in pretty much all of the sites we visited. As I nearly broke my neck tripping over these damn things like ten times, it made me wonder how a country that could produce Leonardo di Vinci, could also decide it’s a good idea to keep these things on their roads… and allow millions of tourists to walk on them.

Stop #4: Piazza Venezia

The “Wedding Cake” or Vittorio Emanuele II Monument in Piazza Venezia. I liked the statue at the top.

We all loved these Dr. Seuss-ish trees, which we saw all over Rome. I guess they’re called Mediterranean Pines.

Stop #5: The Colloseum

Cara the Merciful!

…or Merciless!

Right. So, at this point in the tour, I realized a sad truth: I’ve acquired more “historical” knowledge from movies and fiction books than from actual accounts of historical events.

Next Stop: the Pantheon

I’m not going to go into details, but there may have been a brief side discussion — and, yes, some confusion - about the Parthenon during this tour stop. (Again…blaming jet lag.)

“Why is the door so big? No one needs a door THAT big!”

— Garrett

There’s Juliano. Incidentally we took a great pic of all of us with Juliano after the tour. But we only used one phone for that pic, and “someone” keeps forgetting to send it to me.

Last Stop: Vatican City

St. Peter’s Basilica. I still don’t know what a basilica is…

The bird. Lol.

Defense wall around the Vatican. More on Vatican City tomorrow when we take the tour.

I had thought all he painted was the Creation of Adam - #4 on that chart, but he created tons of paintings in that chapel. \240Who knew?

So even though the chapel was the highlight, we saw a lot of other cool stuff.

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. About 435 people live there.

The Pine Cone Courtyard. This pine cone is about 15 feet tall. It used to be a pretty cool fountain, but now it’s basically just a sculpture. The Vatican Coat of Arms is behind it. It has the pope’s goofy hat, which made me laugh because they call it a tiara, and the keys to heaven, which Jesus gave to St. Peter. I guess that’s why he’s the one who waits for people at the pearly gates.

Hall of Statues. Apparently the Romans actually painted all of their sculptures, so they were really colorful back in the day. The paint wore off over the years. But, for a long time, everyone thought the Romans left the statues in their natural stone coloring. Our tour guide called this “the big lie.” lol.

That’s our tour guide in the picture. He held up that umbrella so we could find him in the crowds. I don’t recall his real name. We just called him Mary Poppins.

Sarcophagus of a baker. I thought it was cool that they carved pictures about baking on it.

Laocoön and his Sons - this had a pretty cool backstory. They believe it was created around 200 BC in Greece since it’s mentioned in Pliney the Elder’s works from around 20 AD, but it disappeared for hundreds of years and wasn’t found until 1506, when it was excavated from a Roman vineyard.

Cool mosaic all about food.

Crazy Bacchus

Whenever they elected a new pope, they’d hoist him up on this chair and carry him down some long road and parade him around for the people to see. It’s got a hole in it, almost like a toilet seat so the cardinals could verify that the new pope was a man. I guess they were scared a woman would use trickery and disguise to surreptitiously become the pope. Oh, the humanity! 🤨

An actual Roman bath.

Stanley cup…?

The first painting of record to include an image of a camera.

Pine trees seem to be a recurring theme around here. This mosaic is especially neat because it uses so much blue, which was expensive because the lapis used to make it was so rare.

The Vatican Coat of Arms again

This was wicked - the ceiling is completely flat but it was painted in 3D and looks like it has intricate molding. I guess they have to open the windows now and then to help preserve the paintings and birds fly in and try to land on the ridges.

Hall of Tapestries

Counting the ballots for a new pope during the conclave. There was another cool tapestry that I didn’t get a pic of, but it totally messed with perspective. No matter where you stood, it looked like the table in the picture was pointed toward you. Crazy.

The hall of maps. The ceiling was so beautiful.

Map of Calabria where some of our family is originally from!

And seriously, how did they make these maps so accurate without using airplanes? \240

Illuminated manuscripts!

This is where they used to have Vatican parties and get all boozed up. By special invitation only.

The rest of the pics are all in the Raphael Rooms - these were definitely my favorite. This is the Liberation of Peter. It depicts his jailbreak thanks to some crafty angels.

This last painting is Rafael’s School of Athens. It depicts famous scholars, artists, and scientists

Plato and Aristotle.

Raphael painted himself into the scene - he’s the guy with the black hat.

Pythagoras - and some jerk trying to copy his notes right behind him. Haha.

SHIP IT!

After our tour we headed for the boat!

Hit the Martini Bar for the first time…

Had dinner, and got ready for our first excursion tomorrow morning!

We woke up this morning in Livorno, the 4th largest port in Italy, and headed out for our first excursion to Pisa and Florence.

We learned that those Dr. Seuss-ish trees we liked in Rome are actually called \240Maritime Pines and their wood inspired the guy who wrote Pinocchio.

Hence…

About the Leaning Tower of Pisa…

It has 7 bells, one for each of the seven musical notes. It leans because it sunk, due to the loose, wet soil in the area. The region used to be below sea level/underwater. They know this because they found old Roman boats underground while excavating to build the railroad in the 1800s. (I still don’t understand why everything old is buried and needs to be found by archeologists…where does all the dirt come from? How can it bury whole cities before someone can clean up the place?) \240Anyway, the ground is sandy and breaks apart easily which made it difficult to build and…um…keep straight. \240

It’s 59 meters high, but only 3 meters for the foundation. It leans toward the south. Over the past twenty or so years, they closed it to the public and removed soil from north side to allow it to correct itself over time. This idea worked, which allowed Pisa to reopen the tower.

The bells are still in the tower, but they don’t play them anymore because the vibrations could make the architectural problems worse.

Pisa also has a baptistery and a church. The doors going into the Baptistery are plain and boring, but the exit door is beautiful because it leads you on a path to the church.

Here we are taking a regular picture at the \240Tower. The rest of the pics are ridiculous.

Lest you think we were the only ones doing something so silly….