Ciao, Roma!

Well.... wow! Here I am, in Rome!

I had a bit of a post started but I accidentally lost it... let's see if I can remember what I wrote.

Well, we rose early this morning and went into Rome. We all started at the Vatican, and it was good to see old, familiar St. Peter's. :) You know, looking back on the pictures I took, it's difficult to tell just how huge everything in St. Peter's Square place is. For example, there is this picture of me in front of St. Peter's. I ran a good distance away from the camera and I'm very small, but the state of St. Peter behind me doesn't look all that big if I were to just run a little farther back. But here I am with St. Paul ... and I'm still right up next to the statue and he's huge.

Here's a picture looking out from St. Peter's, just behind the statue of St. Paul.
Morning at St. Peter's ... I accidently shrunk this picture -- and then deleted it off my camera! Aaaahhh!
Climbing the stairs to St. Peter's ... it's a beautiful day.

I had originally complained about coming back to St. Peter's because I had been so many times the first time I visited Rome that I could practically recite the tour guide spiel, but ... wow. Once I got there, I shutup.

One of the things I think is really cooll about St. Peter's is the fact that they take all the huge churches of the world and have a mark on the marble floor where, if that church were to be placed inside St. Peter's, it would end. They had marks for Westminster Abbey and something close to home, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.. It ended way far away from the main altar.

The obligitory picture of me rubbing the famed St. Peter statue's foot. If I look ticked off, it's because Claire dropped my camera on accident and it wasn't functioning for a few minutes.
Me doing the same thing 3 years ago.
The main altar of St. Peter's. St. Francis' statue is to the left of the altar, and St. Dominic's is to the right. This is as close as I could get to them, and the pictures I took of the individual statues came out blurry.

Now ... here's the kicker of the whole day, that's practically made my life (though had I known I was going to do this, I still would have been loath to come, mom) -- we had mass this morning *on* St. Peter's tomb. I kid you not. Here is an image of the mass setup; behind it is the tomb itself. That was *absolutely amazing*...!

I'd like to write so much more (and so much better), but I have a very limited amount of time right now. Continuing a little faster ...

Then we crossed the Ponti Santi Angeli> (which has angels holding the instruments of the passion) and saw the very famed Tiber river. It was just an orientation tour, so we kind of saw Piazza Navona very briefly... I'll post some pictures later. We went to the Pantheon, and were told "go explore for about 10 minutes" ... okay ... so me an this guy Shane decided we'd see the Pantheon another time, and poked our heads into Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, the Dominican church adjacent to that pagan Roman place. We got yelled at, but geeze ... she said go explore.

More pictures to come later, have to go to some kind of meeting now.