Saturday, May 28, 2005

Trip to Italy - Day 1

I thought it might be fun to go through my pictures of our trip to Italy and walk through what we did each day. It's been about a year, and I don't want to forget what we got to see. Also, Kerrie is still working on a scrapbook for the trip and I wanted to help her out by reminding her what all the pictures are.

Day 1 (see all pictures)
After landing at Rome's Fuimicino airport in the morning, we took a train into Rome to the central train station. Our hotel was a short walk from there. This is not an expecially nice part of the city, and our hotel was very basic -- for only 12o euros a night! This was our room --


After settling in our room, the first place we headed was towards St. John Lateran Bascilica. This church, not St. Peter's, is actually the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome and considered the Mother Church of all churches in the world.



Here you can see the "baldacchino" over the central altar in the basicilica. This church is a Patriarchal Bascilica, which among other things means that it's main altar can only be used by the Pope himself.



Near St. John's is a small site called the "Scala Sancta" or Holy Stairs. Underneath the marble stairs are wooden stairs that tradition holds were the stairs leading up to the Praetoreum of Pilate in Jerusalum and used by Christ during his Passion. Apparently during Lent people will walk up these stairs on their knees in penance.



After getting our first Italian pizza, we headed on foot down some streets towards the Coliseum. We were a little in awe of our first glimpse of it looking down one of the narrow roads between the basilica and the Coliseum.



Once we got there, we got a lot of pictures of the Coliseum and the nearby Roman Forum. We took a guided tour around the Coliseum and Forum which was entertaining and a little nicer than just walking around looking at ruins on our own. For example, one thing they point out to you in the Forum is the tomb of Julius Ceasar.



I think the last place we ended up visting that day was the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli (Mary of the Angels).

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see all pictures for Day 1

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