Rome (blogs) wan't built in a day

Whew, we have a whole hour to catch our breath…. The pace of our tour is somewhat brutal but it is the same pace we would have if we planned the trip ourselves.

So, what is Roma like? Well, it is an amazing place. The antiquities are everywhere. 3000 years of continuous habitation and they have the ruins to prove it.

The are mopeds everywhere. They zoom in and out of cars and busses like they are possessed. You can see the carnage from encounters with fixed objects along the motorways. Bent frames a wheels lying on the side of the road. Traffic is chaotic by our standards but that is just a Roman thing.

All the men look like a young man I work with. Nice Italian suits and very fit. The ladies, well, the same without the suits. I suspect that the only people who are not fit are the tourists?

So, how can we do Roma in one day? We woke Wednesday morning, boarded the bus and went to the Vatican. It is hard to describe the place so the pictures will have to do until I get home.

Then it was off to the Coliseum. It was pretty busy but a stunning location. It looks much bigger on TV…..

We raced back to St. Peters and had a walk through the structure. The size and scale is friggin unreal. The Sistine chapel was very cool considering how it was painted and by whom.

We had a one hour break and then it was off to the old section of Rome for an evening stroll. The Pantheon, Spanish Steps, the Tivoli fountain and Piazza Novalo were AMAZING. Again, only pictures can tell the story.

Yesterday, Thursday, we went from Rome to Sienna and then to Florence. Again, only pictures can tell the story for now :)

Sienna was very cool. Typical architecture and centuries of history. Firenze (Florence) is amazing too. We’ve only scratched the surface, saw the Statue of David and will be venturing to the downtown shopping core of Firenze today. We are off to a cooking school where we will cook a portion of our supper and then off to San Gianamo for some Tuscan wine and picture taking!

The weather has been fantastic. 28 degrees!! The folks on our tour have been excellent and the folks from Italia have been friendly (Italian but friendly). Romans have a crankiness about them but I am told it is just the way they are. It is not a bad thing, they just seem to exude indifference.