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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Saturday, September 5

So we landed in Rome just after noon on Saturday. My first job was to get cell phone service. See, I was the "member of the group in charge of technology". I brought toys.

World's biggest USB charger	Mobile Hotspot

Now, these are not toys for the sake of toys.

Stuff has to be charged these days. Especially the mobile hotspot.

The mobile hotspot was the coolest thing ever. I was in Rome 15 years ago for ten days. Honestly, I saw more this time in five days than I did last time in ten, and it was all because of this.
All four of us could connect to it at the same time, and we used it to

• Get bus schedules from point A to point B instantly. Google maps is amazing, it told us exactly which buses to take, where to get off, and even the time the bus would arrive.
• Getting answers to questions like "What's this pretty building we're standing in front of?"
• We all cooperated and made maps of places we wanted to see, and places we wanted to eat. Friends contributed to our restaurant list, and it was AWESOME!! We ate so well, and it wasn't expensive. No matter where we were, if we were peckish someone could pull up the map and say "There's a great restaurant right over THERE!"

I did something extra cool. I forwarded my Houston phone number to this device, so friends could call me for free while I was over there. And lots of them did! I felt happy and loved.

If you ever travel abroad, you definitely need to borrow this. Don't buy your own; use mine :)

I made it work by going to a local Tre cell phone store in Rome and buying a data-only sim. It was my first chance to practice my Italian: "Voglio comprare una SIM super internet plus." They handed it right over, $20 for the entire week, unlimited data.

Since I hadn't slept: nap, dinner at the Pantheon, then bed.

 

The Pantheon really was extraordinary, doubly so at night, and we found a ristorante in the piazza that we just loved.

Friday, September 4

So on Friday we showed up at Houston Intergalactic Airport to catch our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt then Rome. Jason, who'd flown the A380 before, was right--those planes are insanely quiet! I had two good seatmates--two Americans, one girl from Singapore and a guy who served as a air paramedic in Iraq. The dude especially was pretty hilarious, regaling us with stories of the patients and doctors he'd seen.
Didn't sleep a wink.

Prologue

"Let's go to Rome!" Craig and I kept saying to Karen. Craig was the only Catholic in the world who'd never been to Rome (so he claimed). I just wanted to go.
Karen had to get married and pregnant to finally be willing to make the trip. Those two things were Jason's doing; he joined the merry band.