Torretta de'Massimi Rome

... highlights were the map room and the candlestick hallway. Saw the sarcophagus' of Constanstine's mother and daughter. Also saw the bronze statue of Hercules and the statue of the man who tried to warn the city of Troy of the Trojan Horse (he and his 2 sons were being killed by a large snake in the statue). Learned that the red marble was used by the upper class of Rome.
Sistine's Chapel was beautiful, but no photos were allowed. Michealangelo ...

... So we went to the Vatican Museum, which houses many Roman, Greek, and Etruscan art, along with Rafael's School of Athens, and of course the most famous thing, the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. It's really amazing to see how many pieces of art work the Vatican museum holds. It's a site to see definitely. The School of Athens was a really great piece and I happen to not know that the School of Athens was not the only fresco in the room. It ...

... our four days there visiting the five towns. There is a 12km track weaving around the cliff that links all the towns and takes around six hours to walk all up. But with the incredible heat and the sun bearing down we decided to walk just between the first two, Monterosso and Vernazza, though in our defence, it is the longest section of the track. It was an incredible, sweaty climb through near vertical hills lined with lemon ...

... sleep (Don didn't have any) and we had our luggage! Strangely enough at the time it didn't seem like a crazy decision at all - we only realized how crazy we really were once we woke up from our nap later that day! We get down to the subway station and use one of those super cool kiosks again and buy our first subway tickets! Only 1 Euro each - we were shocked - that is a great deal! Luckily before this trip I did a lot of research and new ...

... little loft there was a single sofa bed. The room had been set up for only two people so the man at the desk had to make up the sofa bed. We were exhausted and hungry, but did not feel like going out to get anything to eat so we ate some dry cereal that we had with us and we looked at some of the picture we had taken so far on our trip. Then we went to bed.

... myself. Robert really should write down his stories (others have already done some of this for him - see his website: www.ballooningintuscany.com ). Among the tales he told this afternoon: How he met the original Montgolfier family in Paris and acquired a very famous engraving showing the original 1783 Paris balloon flight, and on the back of the frame was written the names of those who flew that day (Robert has this as a postcard; and on his site, too). In Italian the word for ...

March 11th - March 14th
March 11th - Sunday
It took us the whole day to get to Rome... because we missed our first train,
then the train had a hard time getting to Rome... I couldn't understand Italian
so I didn't know what was going on.



Why we missed the train? We got to Milan station early. On the
board that showed which trains are ...

... after some confusion by the Swiss Custom got our Carnets stamped. Then it was the same routine again at the Italian Custom except that they ignored the instructions and stamped the entry and exit as well! Well, they can sort it out when we leave Italy. Down to Domodossola and on the Autostrada towards Milano where we got into the biggest traffic jam I have ever seen We survived through the traffic, I lost sight of ...

... are bricks on the end to hold the original structure together. You can see the straight diagonal lines on the end, made of bricks. Gladiators fought in the arena to entertain Romans, and they could be dueling or hunting animals. Slaves, prisoners, criminals, and even Roman residents could be gladiators. There was even a school for gladiators, but if you registered with the school to learn how to be a gladiator, you were a slave to the school owner, and you had to ...

... need of another "pit stop", and fortunately ducked into an information centre-the sort of place we normally ignore (it is at the very bottom of Via Cavour). We discovered a wealth of information, particularly aligning the various "Forums" that were developed by Caesar, Trajan, and Augustus when the Roman Forum became too small to house all the administrative functions of the expanding empire. They also had a video presentation which involved models of how ...