Sunday, September 6

The touristy part began in earnest on Sunday.
First off, Mass at Santa Maria in Via. Such a wonderful church!! Here's what it looked like inside:

I wore my tie and tried to look smart. Too smart, it seems--some little Italian lady came to me before Mass and asked if I could read one of the readings. I had to say, "Grazie, siamo americani e non parlamo italiano!" The extra cool thing about this church was that it was pretty full, which is a nice thing to see on your first Sunday abroad.

This church became home base, as it were, because there was a bus terminal right in front of it and from there we could easily get anywhere in the city, and it was about a two minute walk from our hotel.

From there, we went to the Pantheon again, this time to get a look inside.

It really is one of the architectural marvels of the world.
It was built around 120 as a pagan temple, which the Christians took over and it's been an active Catholic parish ever since. 

The dome forms part of a perfect sphere which, if you extended it, would just touch the floor of the building.

With the oculus (up top), the opening in the dome, I thought it would be really cool to be there when it rains, but someone smarter than me said "Go in there when it snows--that's the most magical thing in Rome!"

Too bad it didn't snow :(

The coolest thing about it is, it's a normal Catholic parish. Yes, there are tons of tourists cluelessly fumbling around, but to the keen observer, there were holy water fonts as you entered, there were altars for Mass, and even Stations of the Cross on the walls.

After a brief stop at Piazza Navona (where I had to get a video of the beautiful church bells ringing), we went to a tourist office to ask about bus fare to the Colosseum (we hadn't figured out how useful the hotspot would be).

First surprise: Today was the first Sunday of the month, so admission to the Colosseum and the Forum were FREE!!
Thanks, Karen!!

So we found a bus and took it to the Colosseum.

Yes, there were mobs of people there. The most distressing thing were the hustlers trying to separate people from their money:

"Avoid the line!! Buy tickets from me and you won't have to wait two hours to get in!!"

Evil, lying bastards.

How bad was the line? After checking bags for explosives, the line was about five minutes, because you walked to the ticket counter and said "Quattro, per favore" and they just handed you tickets. Did I mention it was free?
Did I thank Karen for timing our trip so well?

Even the roads were closed to cars, so we could walk in the middle of the street!

The Colosseum was as cool as could be. It boggles the mind that they could build that with no steam engines, no motors, just muscle. And yes, the blocks they used really ARE the size of cars--check them out, up top, compared to the people below who are ants.

 

And this is where we had lunch. That's the Colosseum again, in the background:

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