Del Mare Fiumicino

I went to Rome for Turkey Day. Italians don't know about Thanksgiving, but the Xmas decorations sprung out on Friday, right on time. Santa Claus and Baroque architecture, childish to ancient, profane to sanctimonious. In Rome, a city where nothing is new, the opposites don’t attract, they just tolerate each other in a stand-off. Lingerie ads on the churches.

Rome is the eternal city, 2765 years old, according to the ...

Last night I dreamed of onward travels. Anxious dreams. Today is the day I've been dreading since the beginning. Today I go to Rome. I have to obtain visas for Ethiopia and Sudan. I hope it will be quick, and I hope it will be painless, but I have visions of money flying from my pockets as I wait for the slow gears of third world bureaucracy to slowly crank out my paperwork. "Just give yourself lots of time" Shanny, the tour manager had advised. Time I have, money ...

... Paul, many people were crying. I never realized how important he is to so many people. It was really beautiful to see the passion and unbreakable belief of the people there. There were nuns and priests from all over the world there, all dressed in different colours. Next, we went to the Vatican museum and saw many beautiful statues, some with missing pieces I might add, and works of art from Michaelangelo, Giovanni, Divinichi, and others ...

... a great way for Ali to finish off her holiday. Meanwhile Pete after several hours and untold expense phoning marinas on our Australian mobile phone, found that there was not a single marina within 100 miles of Rome that had room for us. Fortunately he met a guy who spoke English and told us of a long term storage yard that often had catamarans tied up. Pete contacted him and within the hour he and the boys had untied and were heading for the next canal down the coast where we ...

... my hostel, neither.

In the next morning, I went to Vatican, the thirtieth country I had visited. On my way, I dropped by a money exchange, but they took an incredibly high commission. I remembered I was also taken a high commission in Venice, too. I thought they should have shown their commission rate at front. In Piazza di San Pietro, there was a long waiting line to pass throgh the security gate for St. Peter's Basilika. I was stopped at the gate, because I ...

... to just leave. We were tired and a bit burned out with all the culture. As we were walking out of the museum we had to go through room after room of more artwork. I dont like the way that the place was laid out. It felt like the Catholic Church was forcing all this artwork (religious or not) on me. Actually, knowing the Catholic Church, this felt about right. It was like this was its way of saying "you WILL look at this art and you WILL walk through these ...

... many of the emperors built their grand estates during their reign). The weather was perfect, a beautiful autumn day at around 75 degrees. We walked for what felt like miles through the palaces, forums, and houses of ancient Rome. It was a great experience for the simple fact that we were all able to see for ourselves the greatness of the Roman civilization. Now I am not saying this purely because I love Rome and its history, but everyone agreed ...

Hi everyone As i explained in the last entry we had to cut the french part of the trip out due to the rail strike meaning that we had to take the night train direct to rome. We arrived three days ago and we must have looked a real sight in this beautiful city. The train was a nightmare and was not made for 3 big lads and a little one to share the same compartment. we had a supernatrual encounter with somthing that sounded like an italian banshee around 4 am which made us ...

... snowing. If you look out the windows right now, it is sunny where we are, but the tops of the hills are covered with snow. As far as school, my classes are going well. I was able to develop my first picture the other day in photography and it turned out really well. My Italian class is moving us along a a very speedy pace, but I have not found that keeping up with the work to be too difficult. This weekend a bunch of us are headed to Genoa. It is on the way to Torino and ...

... enough that I could see everything, and that gave me a huge sense of accomplishment.
2)It had artifact descriptions in many languages including English!
It had many authentic and recreated instruments of torture, but also copies of old paintings, engravings and wood cuttings depicting the events. I also learned some neat and useless trivia. Did you know that Edison, while competing against Westinghouse for patents on electricity, submitted documents describing the danger ...