Exploring Ancient Rome and A Revelation That Changed Our Lives.

Posted February 7, 2014.

Guest post by Robbie.

    Alright, before I start out, I want to make something clear. Many of you know that my mother is kind of crazy when it comes to capturing the moment. Some people even call her the Photo Nazi (crazy, isn't it?). She normally takes about 25,000 pictures a year. This trip alone she has probably already taken 1,000s, and we are only on January. So, she put a lot of pictures on these post, and it's a lot more than I wanted, so some of these pictures will not receive captions. 

    Sorry to waste your time.

    Anyway, for those who don't know, we stayed in Rome for five days at the beginning of our little escapade (I must ask though, if you didn't know, why are you reading this blog?) So, when you think of Rome, what is the first famous broken stone stadium that everyone visits? You got it. 

    The Colosseum. So, of course, we went. We had breakfast, and went to the great imperial stadium. It was really lucky that we met a certain tour guide. We owe our entire gelato experience to this day, and this tour guide. We had just so happened to mention gelato, and this tour guide just so happened to know the secret of spotting real, true gelato. So here is the Golden Gelato Rule. REAL gelato is really creamy, and it slides down, so if you've ever been to Italy, you've seen the stands where the gelato is piled up high so you can see it. Alert. This is not real gelato.

    Back to the Colosseum. We got in and had a tour with a guy that was, put nicely, very descriptive in some of the bloodier events that happened there. Some things worth having the tour for though, was having the little details pointed out. The whole place was decked out in gold, marble, and statues. The entire place was stripped, but there are some stones that were engraved beautifully.

    One interesting fact. The Colosseum is probably smaller than Rice-Eccles Stadium back home. I personnally was very disappointed. I've seen all these pictures of the great and grand Colosseum, and in reality, it is not all that is promised. Who knows. Maybe in thousands of years people will discover the many football stadiums we had and think that we had crowds come and watch groups of men fight to the death.

    Let me say, this bottom area stinks really bad. It smells like the beach, but worse. My brother was quite surprised to learn that smell was years of blood soaked into stone. Now, you can enjoy many pictures of us posing.

    I think that wraps up the Colosseum. Well, the next part of our story is across the plaza and up a hill. The hill where Rome was born, as a matter of fact. It has the Imperial Palace and Forum on it. Quite unfortunately, dad had to go renew the parking ticket, and we missed our tour. Or the guide never came. Or, a band of Romans magically travelled ahead in time, kidnapped our guide, and went back to the time they came. Whichever you chose. 

                                            

    We walked around a little bit, and joined the next group and went and checked it out. Between the Colosseum and the Imperial Palace and Forum, I would chose the Palace and Forum. There were a lot of cool stories about the ancient Romans. Of course, we started with the legend of how Romulus and Remus were raised, but we also heard the story of how the Romans stole all the women of the Sabines, and how Rome conquered other tribes. 

    One really cool thing we saw was the marble. We were standing on a piece of dirty marble, and the guide poured a little water onto the stone, and lo and behold, a beautiful stone appeared. It looked like it belonged in St. Peter's Basilica. In fact, most of the stone in the Palace and forum was stolen and used in the churches.

    Now we take a trip to see the Michelangelo, Moses. One of the things that makes this Moses different is the fact that he has two little lumps in his head that turns out to be horns. 

    Here my father teaches us a valuable lesson of Communism. To light Moses up, it costs two Euros. As soon as we paid the money, everyone in the church came running to get a picture. The thing about Communism is that no one wants to pay for a picture, but everyone wants to take advantage of the person who does (straight from the mouth of my father. Personally, I think there is more than one problem). 

    And now, the best part of the day.

    Dinner.

    But seriously, this is the BEST pizza ever freaking ever, end of story, period. So good. I can't write the feelings and taste of the pizza. I can't do it justice. It's kinda like in the Book of Mormon, where some things Nephi and other prophets can't write all that happened. But tastier.

    And then came the Revelation that Ellie would say LITERALLY ended the world and started it again better.

    Nutella Pizza.

    It is soooooooooooooooooo good. better than any gelato we had in Rome. You have to have it if you go to Rome. 

Here are some cool hedges of Lupa feeding Romulus and Remus. 

And, our hotel rooms. 

    The little sink in-between the shower and the toilet is not a foot sink, as I thought.

    It's a butt sink.

    In answer to the question I know you are all asking, yes, Joey always sleeps in shades.

    So, yea, that is one of our days in Rome.

    Robbie