Jill's Adventures

Hello from far away! Well, we made it through a long day of touring Rome today! It was long, but full of very interesting things.
We started the day quite early with breakfast brought to our room at 6:45am (gotta love room service!). We soon boarded our bus in Civitavecchia (good luck pronouncing that) which made its way to Rome. It’s a HUGE city with about 3million inhabitants, but on most days there are about 5million people roaming around in Rome, haha, good one. Our first stop was to take a walk around the Roman ruins called the Forum, which dates back to about 700B.C, more or less, VERY old no matter what year in “B.C’ it was! It’s insane how that stuff is still around for us to walk all over about 3000 years later! After those ruins we headed to the famous Coliseum which is bigger than 100 pictures can capture! Unfortunately we didn’t get to go inside due to time constraints.
After those two places, we got some semi-Italian lunch and then headed to the Vatican. We spent a bit of time taking in the immensity of St. Peter’s Square (outside the Vatican) before heading into St. Peter’s Basilica, just on the edge of the Square. We saw the window that the Pope stands at when addressing the community as well as being told that about 300,000 people can stand in St. Peter’s Square at one time!
Somehow they let us through the border checkpoint into the Vatican, since it is its own country, and we couldn’t have ever imagined the magnificence of St. Peter’s Basilica until actually stepping inside. This Basilica is the largest in the world; 20,000 people can stand inside the Basilica and still each can have about 3ft. of standing room! There was no possible way to capture this by picture or even by video. It was all built by natural stone (marble) and every religious scene on the walls was actually a mosaic with tiny, tiny pieces to form it; but from afar it can very easily be mistaken for a very good painting! What we saw was all very incredible and I could easily see myself spending at least 3 days taking in all the sites in Rome but still not being satisfied! 9hrs was not nearly enough. Out of all the ports we’ve been to, this is by far my favorite and it only left me wanting to turn the ship around and go back!
Well, I bet I took a few of the facts that dad was going to include in his blog, but I’m SURE he has plenty he’d like to relay. But for once, we’re going to let mom get her 2 cents in before dad and I steal everything!

Mom’s Perspective:

Well, the pressure is on being 2nd! As always, Jill said it well. I’ll just fill in from the day before. We stopped in Naples, but we hopped on a bus and headed for Sorrento, where we were shown to a farm where cruise ship tours are a cottage industry for this family who owns a relatively small plot where they grow lemons and olives, making their own limoncello, wine and olive oil. We got to see the process for making mozzarella and also had a nice lunch there. After seeing a bit more of Sorrento, we spent about 90 minutes at the base of Mt. Vesuvius seeing a relatively small portion of the ruins of Pompeii. It was a great overview, but the area is truly immense. Pretty amazing to see how this city is being dug out from 75’ of ash.

We may be getting to old for touring this intensive, but we have another big day tomorrow. Probably won’t get another blog done until Saturday, when we’re taking it easy. Now, last but not least……
Dad’s Perspective:

Dave G.: Have not seen any of your relatives….at least any that would claim to be!

Vatican City: Amazing what man can build. Much more than I had ever expected!

Italy: A very old place. Lots of volcanoes, active and inactive. Needa to coma backa againa. I always thought that the exaggerated expressions of speech for the Italians was just that….exaggerated. But each of our three tour guides speaka thata way!

Overall: A very enjoyable trip with absolutely perfect weather each day. Sunny and 80 to 85 degrees.