College Friends Visit Day 3 & 4 - Rome

May 8th-9th

We took the train into Rome.  We all settled into our hotels and then wandered out for dinner and to see the Trevi Fountain.

The Trevi Fountain is in the middle of a bunch of buildings.  It kind of takes you by surprise if you're just walking around.  You come out of an alley and BAM! there it is.

Woo!  Lights!

Turns out the Trevi Fountain is a popular destination.

This concludes our adventures for tonight.

Dan had to leave early in the morning and I went off to wander while waiting for everyone else to get up and be ready for the day.

Apparently it was time for this fountain to get washed.

It's the center of a round about for a large intersection.

I found some street art on my way to meet up with our friends.

I found some street art after meeting up with our friends.

We found the Colosseum!
Fun fact:  This is THE Colosseum, but a structure like this is called a coliseum.
That's not confusing at all.

It was full of and surrounded by people.  We did not go inside.

Apparently you could take a horse drawn carriage....somewhere.

What do you do to celebrate a victorious battle?  You build and arch.  Arch of Constantine.  

This one is for Constantine I's victory over Maxentius in 312.

The Colosseum was completed in 80 AD.  

Courtney and Josh!

The Colosseum could accommodate between 50,000 and 80,000 spectators. 

It has this weird shape because the outer walls only remain for about half of the Colosseum.  It would have been a complete oval originally.  If you don't know that, it looks like they started building, and didn't meet up when they came around the oval so just decided to make it have a little overlap bit, hoping no one would notice.

This year the Colosseum turns 1,936 years old. 

The Roman Forum.

And views from Palatine Hill. 

Julius Caesar.  Somebody gave him a wreath. 

This is the Altare della Patria or the Altar of the Fatherland.  

It's a monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II the first king of Unified Italy.

It's also MASSIVE.  I think they took the blue prints and made every measurement 1.5 times bigger.

Lion!

This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

It was created after WWI.  Above the tomb are the statues of Vittorio Emmanuele II and Roma (the goddess personification of Rome).

There is also and eternal flame nearby.

The plaque says "Gli Italiani all'estero alla madre patria" which translates as"Italians abroad to motherland."  I'm guessing a better translation would be "Italians abroad and at home" and is probably a reference to those who died in various wars and battles.

Josh, Courtney, Awesome Photo-bomber, Kerri, and Will.

Our next stop was the Panhenon.  

Which is also massive, or at least has massive doors.

Carved stone molding goes ALL the way up.

The tomb of Vittorio Emmanuele II - Father of the Fatherland.

The Pantheon was completed in 126 AD.  Since the 7th century it's been used a church dedicated to St. Mary and the Martyrs - which sounds like a good band name.

It is the world's largest un-reinforced concrete dome.  Neat.
Side Note: panorama shots sometimes do weird distortions.

Raphael's Grave - After Raphael's death in 1520 the artist's body was immediately transferred to the Pantheon.  In 1833, during the papacy of Gregorio XVI, the grave was opened to verify the body's existence.  The body was found, and the pope gave, as a gift, the ancient marble sarcaphagus where is the inscription:  "Here lies Raphael, by whom Nature feared to be outdone while he lived, and when he died, feared that She Herself would die."

Raphael commissioned this statue, Madonna del Sasso (Mary of the Rock), in 1524.  

It was created by Lorenzetto aka Lorenzo Lotti. 

Giant Egyptian column, because, why not?  

A colorful flower stand.

The Spanish Steps were under renovation.  The big deal about them is they're a big set of steps that get you from the Bourbon Spanish Embassy to Palazzo Monaldeschi.  Woo steps.

We walked up to the Borghese Park and had a great view of Rome.  That massive looking building in the middle between the trees is the Altare della Patria from earlier today.  We walked from there.

Over on this side you can see the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

We'd had a pretty big day, at least where walking was concerned, so we made our way back to more central Rome.  Courtney found out that a hotel near her's and Josh's did a saber champagne thing every day at 19:00.  So we went, because, why not?

I failed to get a photo of the actual sabering happening (they open one bottle by pushing a saber blade against the cork) but I got some photos of the sparkly chandeliers.  

After champagne we went off to dinner.  Before we split up for the evening we went to see this statue.

This is the Fountain of Moses aka the Fontana dell'Aqua Felice (Happy Water Fountain).  It was built in 1585 by Domencio Fontana at the bequest of Pope Sixtus V.  We liked it because it reminds us of 1st Down Moses at Notre Dame, mostly because of the hair horns and the pointing.

 For some reason there are also four Egyptian style lions as part of the fountain.

Also with the fountain is this inscription, which I find confusing.  

1 - The fountain was charged by Sixtus, not Pius.  

2 - four in Roman numerals is IV not IIII.  

3 - Why is the "i" in Pius and the last "i" in iiii larger than the other i's? 

Anyway, this concludes our adventures for today.

College Friends Visit Day 2 - Amalfi

May 7th

Today took us down to the Amalfi coast and Positano.  We started in Vietri so our friends could do some ceramics shopping.  We had lunch in Maiori and then we drove along the coast to Positano.

There was this large nativity village on the hillside.  

I wanted them to pretend to be Godzillas, but Dan wanted a nice photo.  

Will and Dan; Kerri and Courtney; Josh.

The Sea!

It turns out there's a lot of steps to get down into Positano.

I envy this person's walkway garden.

We made it down to the beach!  

We had gelato, hung out for a bit, and then had to climb ALL the way back up the hillside.

This concludes our adventures for today.

College Friends Visit Day 1 - Pompeii

May 6th

Our first adventure with our friends from collage was to Pompeii.  So...Pompeii the....sixth? seventh?  I don't know anymore.  It's been a lot.

The suburban baths.  They were closed this time....for reasons.

This art seems familiar.  

It turns out it was at Pisa when Dan and I went with his parents in January of 2015.  

Art in the Roman basilica.

A fallen angel, with a lady being a perfectly timed censor bar.  

Courtney and Dan and the giant head.

The regular Pompeii bodies were missing, but they had this poor dog on display.

Maybe that dog belonged to this house.  Cave Canem.  Beware the Dog.

The poppies were in full bloom which made everything lovely.

There's this pretty, but weird plant.  I don't know what it is.

Red walls!

Bathtub.  For laundry, not people.

More of the laundry works.  I think this was a commercial laundry and not like a wash-o-matic.  

Will, Kerri, Josh, and Courtney discussing the laundry situation.

A take away counter at a restaurant.

Garden painting inside a house.

The "Country Villa" was open for the first time, so that was exciting.

Country villas were outside of the densely packed city and had vineyards and orchards attached to the properties.

Doesn't everyone want naked people in the bath...or prayer...or whatever area?

Interior frescoes.

Venus in the Shell.

Sad face above fountain.

Angry face above naked guy.

Gardens!

This is apparently a dining room. 

You'd recline on the marble bed and let cool water cascade down the the middle.  

More of the garden.

There was a weird exhibition about...Egyptian things.

With....Cat God statues.

And....a hippo skull?

Enough of that.

Vineyards and Vesuvius.

To the amphitheater!

It's full of poppies!

And some small white flowers.

So many poppies!

Last stop today is the Brothel!  WOOOO!

Apparently it is a popular place.  Three big tour groups were waiting to get inside.  

I used my Neapolitan-ness to push through them.

That bed doesn't look comfortable, no matter what you're doing on it. 

The walls had frescoes as a "menu" to pick out what services you'd like.

And that ends our tour of Pompeii today.  We saw a lot of the regular things, and some of the regulars were blocked off, but the country villa and the brothel were new.

This concludes our adventures for today.