Apartment I Gatti Di Roma Rome

... where Leonardo played practical jokes, where Mussolini entertained Hitler.

Rome has always been serious about its image. The City was built to have substance. Romans invented concrete and they have continued to build with the most enduring materials available. You won’t find any particle board in Santa Maria Maggiore. Street curbs and gutters are marble, fences are cast iron, many streets are granite, garbage bins ...

... Heat is relative. Back on topic, as I had spent six months in Israel, it makes sense that such an abundance of flowing water stood out to me. I am thankful for it, too. Otherwise, I would have blown all my money on water all day. Better to save it for pizza and gelato.

Back to the hardcore tourist day, the next stop for the Australian, my Weizmann friend, and me was the Pantheon. Beautiful building, resting place for Rafael, but nothing incredible. Being a public place ...

... 17 yr. old son was at the desk inquiring about us. I screamed in excitement, now we can walk outside and have our first dinner in Rome! After dinnner, it was still bright and decided to walk a small section of the city. We even passed by the block where the Colosseum was. Most of the stores were closed on the main street but I believe this was my first taste of gelatto!

... using our finger as its anchor point, tie it around our wrist and charge us 5 euro. They all had the same schtick: after we said no repeatedly, they would ask us "meow?", making fun of us I guess, and then KK and I would say (in unison, ineveitably), "we are not cats!", and then they would be like "calm down, relax", but at least they would leave us alone. Annoying buggers. After some more walking, we ...

Saturday: Matty arrived bright and early! I met him at the Termini train station and had no trouble finding Platform 24, where the shuttle from the airport arrives. The weather was perfect for his entire visit - except for one day that was kind of misty - and Sunday was especially beautiful. After shopping at the supermarket, we ate on the balcony of his room which had a great view of St. Peter's Basilica and Rome. We ventured to ...

Lets start from the beginning.... flights! Actually wasn't too bad...better than Air Canada. We sat at the very back of the plane which was ok, just the two of us in our row so lots of elbow room. The flight was late, about one hour but we arrived in London right on time. There were several movies to choose from on the flight but I think I watched Shrek 3 at least twice. The food was surprisingly ok, but they wanted 1.5 pounds for a small bottle ...

... walls. But it was a fantastic site with wonderful intact mosaics depicting all of the various navies that visited, an intact Roman theatre and, the highlight for the children, pine trees, the nuts of which could be broken open with rocks (actually I'm afraid, they were bits of of the ruins) to reveal pine nuts inside. Last Sunday we went ice skating at Renzo Piano's new auditorium: like 3 mushrooms in the landscape built rather along the lines of ...

... the arena. Its amazing that had that kind of technology 2000 years ago. Apparently, when some new guy was the emperor, he had a celebration that lasted over 100 days and they killed over 5,000 exotic animals. It must of been a riot! Think about 60,000 people yelling and cheering for a gladiator in the arena....fighting to the death. Those seem like prison rules. I picture it in my head and it seems cool...not to die but to watch. We saw this guy in the middle of ...

... road until you are waaay out of town then you say "****! I don't want to walk all the way back" and you quickly find the nearest train tracks and follow them. On a side note, we did not visit the Coloseum or the Vatican while we were here (Crazy I know, but no point in repeating what's already been done).

Hi everyone! It is my third day in Rome and I think I will head south to Serrento in the morning. I have seen so much in three days. The Vatican was great, it has a very large art collection and the jewels where to much to imagine. The Sistine Chapel was very inspiring. I was shocked by the size of St. Peter's Basilica. It was very easy to feel that the Vatican was very powerful in wealth and faith ...