Italy, 2009

Italy, 2009

Allen and the Colosseum.

If you click on the photo (to enlarge) and look in the crowd to the left,
you will see red-cloaked gladiators mingling with the tourists.
Who can refuse to buy a postcard from a man with a sword?

We arrived in Roma, Italy at 8:30 a.m., which was 2:30 a.m. on our internal clocks, checked into our hotel and slept until late afternoon.


The main features for us in Rome were the historic ruins and old buildings; Florence was for the art. Raphael, Donatello, etc turned out to be real people, not just Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they created spectacular works of art.

Rome, of course, also had lots of art all over the place as well as in most churches and many fine museums such as the Borghese Gallery and the Vatican Museum.

And fountains were everywhere...

...as were columns.

Rome wasn't built in a day, so we left ourselves some time to see it. We didn't see it all, but after two weeks we finished Rome-ing around and headed for Firenze (Florence).

While staying in Florence we took two day-trips: Pisa and Siena. After a week in Florence, I got art-ed out and we left for Venice.

There was much to do in the cities that we visited during our month in Italy. Every day was filled with exciting and interesting places and the people with whom we interacted were friendly and helpful.

As we wandered the small back streets away from the tourist areas, people would recognize us as tourists (I can't imagine how they were able to tell. We thought that we blended.) and would offer helpful information about local points of interest or tell us stories about some site.






Even our two (that we know of) interactions with pick-pockets (whose attempts we foiled) did not diminish our enthusiasm for Italy but gave us two additional interesting stories.

(See Metro sign to the left.)






We found Judaica in each of the cities that we visited, even Ostia Antica. Information about those places is collected in a single post: Italian Judaica.

Please keep in mind when looking at the photos of various ruins that the dun-colored brick that you see was the under-structure and it was covered with gleaming white marble and often had decorations of bright colors. Most of the original marble was scavenged during the Dark Ages and ground up to make cement. Statues that were considered pagan were also ground up.




When you see photos of statues, please note that the statues were originally painted to look like real people as was this statue of Minerva. Over the years, the paint has worn off and what we now see is the scoured white marble. As Minerva shows, statues are sometimes found with intact paint. (She is missing a glass eye.)






As usual, photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and clicking on the blue words or phrases will bring you to more information and better photos than I could have taken.

After looking at the posts, you may wonder why we did so little in the month that we spent in Italy. For the sake of brevity, we left a lot out, only mentioning our highlights and posted only a small fraction of our nearly 3,000 photos. We're working on an edited version that should be available in a while. If you'd like to see it, let us know.

To see the posts, click on the titles below:

Rome-ing Around

Frenzy in Firenze

Getting Our Feet Wet in Venice

Italian Judaica

The Bocca Dela Verita (Mouth of Truth) is reputed to bite the hand of those who are not telling the truth.

We had a molto bene time in Italy, and that's tutta la verita!

Best wishes for a good spring.

Allen & Sarah

To see the next post in this series, click here.