Rome Trip Part II

Day 4: We found that Rome is divided into three main attractions. 1) Ancient Rome 2) Baroque Rome and 3) Papal Rome. Saturday we did Ancient Rome, Sunday we visited Baroque Rome and so Monday we headed off to explore the cradle of Catholicism. We started with St. Peter's Basilica. What a beautiful church. To stand in the square and be surrounded by sculpture, fountains, architecture and to be enveloped by the immensity of it all was simply amazing. We decided to climb up St. Peter's dome before the kids got too worn out...537 steps will wear even grown ups out! The boys loved going up the stairs. You start off with a fairly large stairway and by the time you are almost to the top you are winding around a very narrow metal spiral staircase with just a rope to hang onto. I have to give a shout out to Hyrum who carried Julian up the entire way!

A view from St. Peter's square

Hyrum hiking up the stairs with little man Jules

The view of St. Peter's square from the very top of the Dome.

After enjoying the view from the top we headed down all those stairs and walked around St. Peter's church. This is by far the largest church I have ever been in. You walk in and are completely amazed by the sheer size of this place. Of course we stopped for a moment to enjoy Michelangelo's Pieta and we saw Bernini's High Alter. The alabaster window which is the focus of the apse was amazing. Bernini was so talented in so many different ways!

Bernini's window

Even though our guide book told us not to attempt this with children, we headed from St. Peter's right to the Vatican museum. Fortunately for us we had reserved tickets online the night before and so we were able to avoid the 2 plus hour wait in line! We knew this museum would pose a challenge for our young children, there is just so much to see that it could take hours. What we decided was to tackle just the main attractions. For us this meant the Egyptian mummy, the Raphael rooms and the Sistine chapel. To get from one place to another we had the boys hold our hands and we would "fast forward" through the crowds. They loved weaving in and out of all the tourists as we rushed to our next exhibit. We were in and out of the Vatican museum in 45 minutes...pretty amazing! Of course we will have to come back at some future date when the kids can appreciate all this museum has to offer but for now I am so pleased we got to see the main attractions.

The Laocoon sculpture, not exactly on our list to see but still amazing to see in person this item that I had studied so much about in Humanities...plus it was on our way to the Egyptian mummy:)

I really don't know why my boys love skeletons and mummies, maybe all boys do, but they sure were enthralled by this person.

Raphael's School of Athens. Another amazing piece of art history.

And finally we fast forwarded our way to the Sistine chapel. When you stop to remember that this whole ceiling was painted by one man AND that he had to lay on his back the entire time AND he couldn't see the big picture from the tiny spot where he lay...this is truly amazing!

Family photo op with St. Peter's in the background.

After taking the boys through St. Peter's and the Vatican museum we needed a bit of R &R so we headed to a nearby garden and let the boys throw rocks and sticks into the Tiber river. As long as there is water nearby Julian is happy:)

Townsend sleeping on the floor of the bus sums up exactly how the boys were feeling by the end of this day!

Day 5: After the long day we had on Monday we decided to narrow Tuesday down to 2 main sites. The Pantheon and Piazza Navona. The day started off pretty crummy, pouring down rain and cold. We finally got wet enough to buy umbrellas off a street vendor and then five minutes later the rain stopped and the sun came out!

The Pantheon. It was actually kind of cool to stand inside the Pantheon with rain pouring in through the oculus. The Pantheon is Rome's only remaining intact building from ancient times.

We truly needed this hot cocoa break, we were all wet and chilled to the bone.

On our walk from the Pantheon to Piazza Navona we stopped quickly in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi for another Caravaggio treat, The Calling of St. Matthew.

As you can tell the sun came out and made our final moments in Rome fabulous. We stayed in Piazza Navona for a few hours just eating pizza, gelato and pastries. Our boys loved chasing the pigeons and tempting the birds with pizza crust until there was a hoard of about 20 birds the boys could then run through. I enjoyed walking around the piazza and seeing all the artists and musicians. This piazza is famous for the Bernini fountain The Four Rivers, once again an amazing sculpture.

From Piazza Navona we walked to the central train station in Rome where we picked up our rental car and headed south to Sorrento, but we'll save that for another post.