Home again Home again......jiggetty jig?

So I've been home for over 24hours and now am desperatley wanting to go back and have some heat and sunshine.  This weather is taking control over the house like it really shouldn't.  I.E. setting a dampened mood.  Maybe the ants crawling in a line across my kitchen floor doesn't help out or seeing the weeds outdoors just wanting to be pulled.

But I'll just get back to the memories of a great trip instead.  I am currently waiting for all like 511 pictures to download onto the computer.  I guess that isn't too bad for 10 days is it?  Those don't include J's pictures which will need downloading as well.

I am having a somewhat mind block on what exactly to blog, so I think I'll post some pictures up and than blog to that?

Welcome to our home away from home.  This is the street in Rome where we lived for a few days.  Thats the door to get into our apartment.  They say that the doors are old and the locks on the doors are just as old.  At first this scares you a little because maybe just anyone can break in.......but you can hardly get into your own door with your key.  Once we were indoors we had to go through a gate with another faulty key entrance.  That wasn't all of course we still needed another key and faulty lock to get into our apartment.  Maybe living in Canada isn`t so bad after all.

This is the view of our tiny tiny living area.  Even though the apartment has 2 bedrooms, you couldn`t live here permantley with 3 people.  Well not us anyways.  I guess if you had to make do you would.  I did like the authenticity of the place and tried to make the best of it.  But the bugs and cold showers and lack of interent at some points didn`t help the situation a whole lot.  Thankfully we spent most of our time outdoors in the Roman world rather than inside this cramped place.

Our bedrooms.  Yes the one with the luggage on the bed was D and my bed.  It looks like twin size in this picture doesn`t it?  The rooms were pretty squishy, but the end of our day of walking and walking we were thankful for a bed to sleep on.......even if it was a little hard :)

So that was our home away from home in Rome.  When I get to Venice it will be a much happier story...

DAY 2

(Day 1 was just travel and than crash)

Do you recognize a photo of this?  If you ever have looked at pictures of Rome you probably know what it is, but if you`re like me you wouldn`t have a clue.  This is St. Peter`s Basillica in Vatican City.  The building was magnificent.  The acoustics were really neat as well.  When we entered the Basillica a group of worshippers were singing in Acapella and the way the building carried their voices was...hard to describe.  Later another group of worshippers we listened to as well as an organ.  D videoed apart of it, but it just doesn`t do justice in comparisson to the live version.  We walked around the building in awe of its structure.  Most people go there of course for different reasons.

Here is a picture of the interior.  Or just a portion of it.  From the floor to the skyline.  Sometimes while we were there we wish we could read a little Latin.

After our trek through the Basillica a pregnant me was getting a little hungry!  So here is us enjoying our very first truly Italian pizza.  Much different than at home.  We decided by the end of the trip that we really do like Mom VLs  pizza way over this Italian stuff.  We did enjoy the many different types of Italian pizza that we did try, just Mom`s won!

Where are we headed?  Well this picture comes with a story before the actual picture.  After lunch we decided that we would try and find the Sistine Chapel. So we took a direction around the Vatican city trying to find it in a total different direction.  We didn`t exactly find it, rather we ended up walking almost all the way around the city.  Of course we were not used to the 32 degree weather and were rather warm by the time we got back to the original entrance.  So we trooped on back inside where we originally started a little tired, but still with energy to see something new and exciting.  Well we found out the Sistine Chapel was closed. 

The next idea was to go up to the top of the Basillica.  Here was the toss up... 5 Euro`s to walk the stairs of 7 Euro`s to take an elevator ride.  Well D said he`d walk and so J decided she would walk leaving me to feel a little silly to take an elevator by myself.  I figured awe I`m only 19 weeks prego I can handle the 551 + 230 stairs that we`ll have to walk up.........the picture above was the beginning of this long heart pumping journey.

This is the reward we recieved for all our hard work climbing those stairs. A beautiful view of Rome.  I have more pictures of the city from here, but I can`t place them all on the blog.  This was one of my favourites from up there. I really didn`t want to post a picture of my exhausted face :)

Of course if you go up we also had to come down.  Thankfully we took the elevator on our departure.  This went to a deck on top of the Basillica.  This is one of my favourite photos of the 2 of us.  It was quite nice having J along to snap a lot of photo`s of the 2 of us.  Of course we took lots of her too!

Notice the sweater, and pants........yes it was like 32 degrees outside, but we had to respect the dress policy and cover bare knees and shoulders.

Last but  not least on our 1st day of exploration.  After a late evening meal we decided to check out the Trevi Fountain.  You are supposed to throw in a coin backwards using your right hand over your left shoulder to make your ``wish`` come true.  The first coin is to bring you back to Rome, I think if you throw another its for love and the third to get married?  I`ve read different things.......

They really do want you to be in love while you are sitting down.  These guys are constantly trying to sell a rose to guy to give to his girl.  They literally walk to the girl and put the flower in her hand and say to the guy you pay!  Most people tend to turn them down as they`re fairly annoying, but a few ``suckers`` as J likes to call them fall for it.    There were also guys trying to take a photo with a polaroid, or glow in the dark stuff.  Whatever they could sell to the many tourists.

Well think that is a big enough blog for one day.  I will post more days as time goes on.  The stories do really come back to your mind when you look at your pictures again........I guess they do speak a thousand words.