Lucky number twelve

St Peter's Basilica dome

Years ago I told R about an article I read in the New York times about a woman who wanted to visit one country for every year of her age. Ever since, R has wanted to meet that goal, too. Today, if you count Vatican City as a country, she made it!*

We started the day at St Peter's Basilica. It was overwhelmingly ornate. R enjoyed it because she really likes marble work. She spent as much time looking at the floor as up. S's favorite part was the huge bronze canopy. Actually, bronze caught her attention in other places we visited, too. It's funny how the kids are attracted to different materials regardless of how they are used. T and L were a little restless in the Basilica, so E played eye spy with them. Suddenly, T called out, "I see a naked flying baby!" There were naked flying babies everywhere!

Michaelangelo's Pieta

A little dome

Giant naked flying babies or naked flying baby giants?

Extra pictures

I was afraid to put too many pictures in my previous post. They can take a while to load. Here are the extras, if anyone is interested. Also, on the subject of pictures, I am working on a flickr account, but it is slow going because I need E's computer to do it. I will let everyone know when it is ready.

A typical alley from our walks.

Some more shots from the Forum

Forum view of the Vatican

Rome - closing down the Colloseum

This morning we went to the campo de fiori farmer's market. We stopped at a bakery we had seen on youtube and grabbed some pizza for lunch and then checked out the market stalls. It was different than the Swiss farmer's market. Each type of vegetable or fruit was less composed in its bin, but the stands tended to have seasonal arrangements decorating the entire stand. Also, there was a wider variety of stuff - oils, liquor, spices, clothes, etc. At one stand a very old man was demonstrating knives and peelers for cutting vegetables into novelty shapes like spirals and curls. Another stand had signs on everything in several languages saying "don't touch!" but as soon as you got close enough a woman who looked like a fairy tale witch would chuck plastic bags at you and motion that you'd better start filling them. One woman told her she was only looking and an argument ensued. The girls' favorite stand was a self serve dried fruit and nut stand with tons of interesting things: dried whole cherry tomatoes which almost tasted like dates, candied limes, dried guava, spiced fava beans, a whole candied citron, etc.

S saw this picture and said, "My friend the fruit guy!" 

The guy running the stand really did seem to take a special liking to S.

After the farmer's market we continued through the neighborhood and stopped at another pizza place I had heard of and ate the best pizza any of us have ever had. I don't think we will ever have pizza that good again. It was perfect in every way. It was a tomato, basil, mozzarella pizza. The crust was thick and soft, full of holes, and the bottom of it was crisp and snapped when we bit through. The mozzarella was better than any I've ever had. The tomatoes were fresh and perfectly salted. It was perfect. I guess there isn't much more I can say.

Perfect pizza.

Rome

View of ruins from our bus.

We took an overnight train from Milan to Rome. It was an interesting trip. The train reminded us of the old East German trains we rode on our honeymoon. They don't make them like that anymore! It was a four bunk cabin, which meant the littles were doubled up with E and me. That was okay, though we might be getting a little old for that kind of thing. The bigger annoyance was the train itself which slowed and accelerated, whistled, clanged, clattered, and jerked all night long. When we arrived in Rome it was to a minor station and we had to take the metro into town. Like in Milan, there were no elevators or escaltors in the subway. It's too bad, since our decision to stick to busses caused trouble later.

We left our luggage at the hostel and headed out. Our first impressions of Rome were not great. The area around the station is pretty rough and filthy and there are lots of aggressive vendors and beggars around. But once we got to a nice bakery and picked up some breakfast to eat in a nearby park with palm trees and ruins we felt better.

The bakery, which specialized in everything cream filled.

Then what did we do? We went back to the station, of course, but only so we could catch an on and off sight seeing bus with an audio tour. It was a good thing to do, even though I'm not sure it saved us very much walking, because it gave us our bearings and taught us about places we might not have bothered with otherwise like the Vittorio Monument.

Steps to Santa Maria d`Aracoel from our tour bus.

Milan

We are finally home, so I will be writing and back-dating the blog again. I have also changed the setting on the comments section so they should show up immediately when they are written.

S checks out the flying buttresses

We woke up very early on Saturday morning and caught a very crowded train to Milan. We passed through a snowstorm! We knew that hiking season ends on October 20, and it has seemed like fall here with the leaves changing and roasted chestnuts being sold on the street corners, but we were a little surprised to see snow several inches deep. It was enough of a storm that we saw a car being towed.

When we arrived in Milan we decided to walk to the Duomo (cathedral) and passed through a very pretty public garden. At the Duomo the first thing we did was take the elevator up to the terraces for a view. The other option would be to take the stairs to the roof. Luckily, I found a hole in a wall that lead to the stairs and the girls and I climbed up to the roof, too. E and the littles went back down since we had the stroller with us.

On the left is the view down from the terrace level.

On the right is the view down to the terrace from the roof.

About a third of the roof was closed off due to construction, but it was still impressive. It is slanted, not surprisingly, so it was slightly nerve wracking for me to make it to the edge to check out the view. I'm finding that my combination of no depth perception and vertigo ear make it hard to get around the narrow ledges, uneven steps, sloping roofs, etc that seem to be everywhere. S loved the roof, though, since she could be as tall as R.