Zoe On Tour 2013: A great big city

Hello Roma!!!

Welcome to the biggest city on our Europe trip so far and what a city it is.

Rome is a massive city filled with surprises, costs and leather boots.

Here's what we've done so far marked in this map that I made by taking a picture of a map then inserting it into photo gene.

On the 1st day we went to Trevi Fountain. Its so much bigger then I thought it would be! Its pristine marble gets washed away by the amount of tourist's camrera flashes. Look at this:

It was so very crowded you could hardly get a good photo, but heres what we managed.

Trevi Fountain's sculpture depicts Neptune, God of the sea, commanding his solders to tame his newly made inventions, horses.

On one side of neptune is his wife Aphrodite (you say it like afro-dight, not to be confused with Venus, god of love). To his other side is Hestia the former 12th Olympian Goddess of family, the hearth and grace. I have no idea why she's there, none.

Drew however might know, because, as you can see from the photograph, He seems to be involved with some seemingly important mental conversation with the god of not looking at the camrera.

Saint Peter's

St. Peters church is a monument we had to see 'no matter how long the lines were' according to mum. Why not the Forum? Why not the Colosseum? I had no idea, but once mum has an idea in her head its pretty hard to shake it out. Since none of us were in the mood to try, we stepped glumly into the holy, very long queue.

After 20 minutes of waiting we stepped into the MASSIVE church of St. Pete. After a small amount of anger and a long wonder about what had possesed the people in St. Petes church to write the directive signs only in Italian, we found the stair case to the dome.

I was surprised to find that in the house of God, the biggest house in the world in fact, they charge you to see the dome: $7 to climb the stairs or $10 to take the elevator up the 1st 325 stairs.

As we climbed the stairs we sung this song, "2 000 000 000 bottles of beer on the wall, if one of those bottles happened to fall, 1 999 999 999 bottles of beer on the wall".

Dad really pushed us up those stairs, but I had my revenge:

This was the view from the top the dome

the view

St. Peters was very crowded as seen here:

wow

Something I want to mention in today's blog is the Colosseum in all its splendour:

Dad booked the under-ground tour for all of us, so we could see all of the strange and interesting tunnels under-ground. The tour was quite interesting but full of incorrect facts, such as these ones (I've added in some real facts - see if you can pick the true or false ones!)

Gladiators fought to the death! t/f
The Colosseum was bigger than circus maximus t/f
The Colosseum was used as a Christian fortress after the fall of Rome t/f
Children were allowed to sit in the emperors box t/f

Answers are at the end of my blog

Here are some pictures of the Colosseum:

this is the view from the top of the Colosseum

the side of the Colosseum

La Bocca della Verità: lions mouth/ the mouth of truth.

here is what Wikipedia had to say on the subject.

(English: the Mouth of Truth) is an image, carved from Pavonazzo marble, of a lion ish face (I might have edited this a bit), located in the portico of the church of santa maria in rome Italy . The sculpture is thought to be part of a first century ancient Roman fountain, or perhaps a manhole cover, portraying one of several possible pagan gods, probably neptune. Most Romans believe that the 'Bocca' represents the ancient god of the river Tiber.

I have to say, Dad did something quite freaky to Drew:

The Mouth of Truth obviously works, because when Drew stuck his hand in and whispered..."I'm a girl".... nothing happened.

Although when he asked again to make sure, the mouth changed its mind...

Finally, i'd like to talk about the most disorganized trip that we did in Rome.

The Vatican

Here are four questions I want answer in this section of my blog...

What is the big fuss over the Sistine Chapel?
What does the Sistine Chapel look like?
Where is the Sistine Chapel?
What was the best thing in the Vatican?

The Sistine Chapel is a hall of paintings all painted by Michael Angelo the famous renaissance painter. Michael started these paintings at the age of 78. He used colour perfectly - vibrant. He was also a great sculptor. He was also very arrogant, In fact, he made a comment about another great artist of the age called Titian (pronounced tee-shin). He quoted. " he is a great colourist, if only he had learnt to draw first".

ouch!!!

You aren't allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I cant really show you what it looks like, but until today, I thought that the Sistine Chapel was a hemisphere and was painted with one massive picture of God touching man, over the entire dome,

I was proved wrong,

The Sistine Chapel is shaped like a giant hallway with nine of Michael Angelo's famous works painted (and with painted frames) on the ceiling

On one end of the hallway is a massive painting of Jesus surrounded by a whirlwind of dead souls and Saints Here are some pictures from the Internet...

Here is the wall...

And here is the whole church...

And finally, here is the famous picture that every one thinks about:

The Sistine Chapel is located in a series of rooms known as the Vatican museums. these are alone much more appealing to my eyes than the Sistine Chapel. These include famous sculptures, old mosaics, ancient artworks, taspetrys and paintings (frescos). I liked these a lot more than the slightly over mentioned Sistine Chapel, they are detailed and show the wrinkles and the frustration of the truth.

The thing I loved most about these museums were the acient statues of Athena. Some other artworks were pretty amazing such as these

And finally

Rome has been completely amazing and I'm going to miss its bustling streets and quiet corner shops, the holy, the pagen, the old and the new but i'll get back there one day because:

All roads lead to Rome

And how right that is