Roman Holiday

The Rome vacation photos are now posted. I've been wrestling with the photo posting site's editor for several days (it now loads the photos in ascending file size order and not chronological order and it took time to properly re-sort), but they are all up, and there are quite a few of them-- about 250-- to enjoy. In reality, a lot more photos were taken, but our not-that-old digital camera suddenly got buggy, and ruined a good 25-30% of the shots. But I think the ones that did make the cut are marvy.

What can I say about Rome that hasn't already been said? It's a wonderful city and was a pleasant surprise for me-- despite my affinity for art, architecture and history, the idea of going to an endless parade of ancient ruins did not seem terribly appealing, but The "Eternal City" rather quickly won me over. While there were terrible winter conditions in the rest of Europe and parts of Northern Italy suffered crippling blizzards, the weather is Rome was merely brisk with some rain thrown in. And Christmas Day itself was sunny and a pleasant 60 degrees-- we even saw one brave soul in shorts and a T-shirt. When you realize that we had offers from friends to spend Christmas in London (which actually shut down in the face of its worst weather in almost 20 years), as well as the Alsace region of France (on the French-German border, which experienced similarly epic weather), I think we lucked out this holiday.

While we got a fantastic deal on airfare and hotel, that legendarily great Roman food is swoonworthy expensive. A light lunch in a simple trattoria off the tourist trail set us back an astonishing 56 Euros ($80), so we quickly learned to grab sandwiches and pizzas on the go.

We visited a lot of churches, starting with St. Peters in Vatican City. We're not the most religious folks out there (indeed, I was waiting for the bolt of lightning to come through the dome of St. Peters to smite me), but in Italy and especially Rome, most of the modern history and patronage of arts was generated through-- and by-- the church. There are numerous cases where the church co-opted pagan temples and buildings of ancient Rome (most notably the Pantheon building) and made them their own.

It was a lot to chew off, and I'm glad we stayed as long as we did. The Italians were gracious and helpful (despite our attempts to speak Italian, everyone replied in English) and the language itself is beautiful to hear. No offense to the Germans, but when we got on our return flight and heard German for the first time in a week, it sounded like loose bolts being chewed up in a sink disposal in comparison to the lyrical Italian language. The ultimate level of success of any trip is this: Will we go back? There is a whole lot more places to explore in Europe first, but I certainly would enjoy a return trip to Rome.

To access the photos you can go to the tool bar on the right hand side or simply click here. Clicking on a photo will give you a blow-up and some commentary by me-- it took almost a week to write it (cross referencing books and maps to do so), so check it out. Lazy folks can just use the "slideshow" button on the top right. Enjoy!