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The Coolest Place in Rome

 We discovered the coolest place in Rome today. By coolest I mean it was in the 60s and it was glorious. Today's planned adventure was to visit the Catacombs. Apparently there are tons of catacombs around Rome. Only a few are open to the public and they also know they have not found all the old catacombs yet. 

We visited San Callisto which is the largest catacomb open to the public. The catacombs were used by Christians to bury their dead as they believed in the resurrection and did not want to cremate the bodies of their dead. San Callisto was the resting place for some 500,000 Christians. They also had many martyrs among those numbers. We were not allowed to take pictures once inside, but it was a really awesome place. Azure asked the tour guide if she had ever seen the remains of any of the people and she said she has seen them and that there are still sealed graves on the lower levels that we did not get to explore. The catacombs were used for a while by the Christians and then forgotten about once they started burying the saints in churches. The catacombs were then forgotten for 1,000 years. Forgotten by all except the occasional grave robber who left the place devoid of many of the treasures. There were still some frescos that could be seen and the occasional part of a marble pillar. The Romans don't do anything halfway. They definitely adorned all their spaces.





After the catacombs we hopped on a bus and headed back towards the center of Rome. We got out near the Rome Capitol building to see the statues and sites there. We had had to wait at the bus stop for about 20 minutes and then rode with very little AC for about that much time. With it being around 95 today we were all hot and a little grumpy. So we took some pictures but kept walking without exploring every place that we could have.








We found a place to stop and eat. At many of the places we have eaten I have seen pizza with french fries as one of the toppings on the menu. I decided to try it today. Carbs on carbs, what's not to love? Ammon said, "you can take the girl out of Idaho, but you can't take the Idaho out of the girl." While I don't really identify as someone from Idaho, I do love my potatoes. It was pretty good. The kids were offended at first by it but eventually tried it (except Lucette) and said it was actually good. It's probably not the best pizza I've ever had, but it wasn't the worst either.


After eating we wandered over to the Pantheon. The Pantheon was originally built as a temple to the Roman Gods, but has since been taken over by the Catholic church. It has the largest unsupported dome ceiling in the world and it really is impressive. 
















We wandered around inside for a while marveling at the place and taking pictures. We then struck out for the Trevi Fountain, but got derailed by gelato. This was the tastiest gelato we have had so far. We all got 2 scoops and it turns out our grumpy friend from Venice was right...you should not get 2 scoops when it is 95 outside We couldn't keep up with the melting. All 3 kids were a sticky mess by the time they finished. We even had to pull over from walking to focus exclusively on our treats.


When walking through Rome there really is something interesting everywhere you turn. The buildings are all old and interesting with statues and monuments all over the place.




As we were walking to the fountain the kids were kind of over it. We were all hot and tired. Cormac asked if it was worth it and I said it really was. Cormac does this thing right now where he will say "Okay" in a very specific way when something is impressive or ridiculous. It is one of my favorite sayings of his right now. When we walked around the corner and the fountain came in view he gave me one of those, "Okays." The fountain is amazing. It was also crowded, but we joined the throng to get our pictures.






Having seen all the top sites I had on my bucket list we headed for the metro and the air conditioning of our Air BnB. While walking we walked past this cool sculpture. Our Air BnB has a bunch of pictures from around Rome hanging up. This statue is among them with icicles. I honestly wish we could see it with icicles right now. 






Comments

  1. Mark DahlJuly 14, 2024 at 7:19 AM

    What wonderful things you are seeing. Sorry it is so hot. It is hotter than usual here also.

    ReplyDelete

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