Roaming Rome

May 14th - We have spent the last three days hitting some of the more historic (and candidly blog boring) sights. Therefore, we are going to combine them into one blog. On the 12th, we woke up so tired from doing the Caesar Shuffle the day before, that we decided to take it easy. We headed out of the apartment just before noon and made our first stop lunch. We ate at a nice restaurant near Termini station. We then walked over to the National Museum to see the great collection of Roman sculptures. This visit almost didn't happen because it is the first museum on our trip that they charged the kids full adult price (because they were non EU children). Most everywhere we have been is free for kids and we couldn't imagine paying full price, especially for Austin. So we initially refused to pay and walked away. We then decided that we wanted to see the sculptures and didn't want to have to leave anyone out, so we went back and paid (although I firmly told the lady I was paying for them under protest...like she cared!). Once inside we saw many Roman emperor busts, The Discus Thrower and original Greek statues. After leaving the National Museum we headed over to the Baths of Diocletian. The former public bath structure was originally sprawled over 10 acres. Today, all that remains is the former main hall of the baths which is now the Church of Santa Maria delgi Angeli. The main hall alone is the size of a football field and 7 stories tall. This gives you an idea of how large the original baths were where they could cleanse 3,000 Romans at once. That's a lot of dirty Romans! That pretty much wrapped up the day (other than our afternoon gelato stop). On the 13th, Amy decided that she would stay back with the kids and let them have a "play day", watching movies, coloring and spending time at the park. I decided that I would take my mom and Gilda to some of the historic churches in Rome. As we were getting ready to leave, Austin decided that he didn't want to stay back, so he ended up coming with us as well. We started off at the San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter-In-Chains). This church, one of Rome's oldest founded in A.D. 440, houses St. Peter's chains and Michelangelo's Moses. Michelangelo's statue was originally supposed to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II. Pope Julius originally hired Michelangelo to build his massive tomb but then ordered him to paint the Sistine Chapel. Julius died before Michelangelo would ever finish the tomb. We then headed to San Giovanni in Laterano (with a brief stop for lunch along the way). This was the first Christian church in Rome, opened in about A.D. 318. It served as the home of the popes up until the Renaissance renovation of St. Peter's. Still today it is the home church of the Pope. We had planned to visit the nearby Holy Stairs, but arrived during the afternoon closure. We opted for gelato instead and headed back to the apartment. Since we were home early, Amy and I decided to have our first date night in 100 days (but who's counting). We decided on dinner and a movie. "Angels and Demons" was opening in Rome today and we thought that would be a perfect movie given its setting and content. We found a theater right off Piazza del Popolo that was showing the movie in English. It was very cool watching the movie and seeing the sights we have been visiting in the movie. After the movie, we walked down Via del Corso and had a nice dinner (sans kids!). We spent some time talking about the movie (I have read the book; Amy hadn't) and mapping out sights in the movie that we haven't seen, but want to. We finished up the night at the bottom of the Spanish Steps before catching the metro back home. Today, May 14th, we decided to visit Capitol Hill and the museum there and then re-visit St. Peter's. After another late start to the day, we began with a climb up Michelangelo's grand staircase to the center of Capitol Hill's main square. We entered the Capitoline Museum and started with a nice lunch on the terrace. We then made our way through the museum seeing many famous works including the original She-Wolf statue (this is just the funniest statue / city symbol to us), Marcus Aurelius, the Dying Gaul and the Boy Extracting a Thorn. We also were able to get some good views of the Forum from the Tabularium. We left the Capitol Hill area and took the bus to Vatican City. At this point we split up so that we could climb St. Peter's dome. My mom and Gilda decided they were not up for the climb, so they did a little shopping instead. This was one of the easiest dome climbs we have done because an elevator took us up to the base of the dome. All we had left at that point was a nice, easy 320 step climb to the top of the dome. From the base, we were able to walk through the interior of the dome and look down on the massive interior of St. Peter's. From the top, we were able to see spectacular views of Rome's sights in the distance and the plush gardens of the Vatican below. After seeing "Angels and Demons" last night, it was neat to be so close to many of the sights today. We then climbed back down the dome and met up with my Mom and Gilda. From there we went down below the church to the Crypt. Here we saw tombs of many of the former popes, including St. Peter and Pope John Paul II. We then exited back in the center of the nave of St. Peter's. It was again, shortly after 5pm and mass was being conducted. We wandered through the church some more just trying to take in all the surroundings. Having spent so much time in various churches, it is amazing what kids, including a 3 year old, will pick up on. As we were leaving, Austin noticed a very large, but plain cross on the Holy Door. He whispered for Amy to come over to him and then said, "Mommy, Jesus isn't on the cross". He seemed very worried by this...but luckily, we are not!