sharing about Italy

This June, Derrick & I went on a trip with our friends Steve & Emily to Italy! It was pretty random how we ended up going...we had Steve & Em over for dinner one night, and they mentioned how they wanted to go to Italy, and asked if we wanted to join them. Well, we didn't have anything up, so we all started planning on it. When I was younger, I dreamed it would be cool to visit Venice sometime...but I wasn't really expecting that dream to come true.

Looking back over the pictures from the trip, which now has been 2 months past already, it's setting in that I was really there, and really experienced Italian culture first-hand. Now, it's pretty cool to watch The Gladiator and be able to recognize different things in the scenes, or to read The Bible and picture what Rome was like back when Paul or Jesus spent some time there.

As I think back, we have some good experiences and stories that go with each place we visited. And, it's true...we have tons of memories, but I'll share about the certain ones that stick out from each day.

Our first day in Rome was a little shorter, cuz we were all a bit tired from the long flight over the ocean. But, we were all excited to finally be there, so we did our best to get some good sight-seeing in. We put some miles on our feet our days here. Most often we'd leave our room between 9 and 10 in the morning, and we usually wouldn't get back to our room until 9 or 10 at night....walking most of the way! (But, that was good exercise for us...we ate a lot of good Italian food...which I'll share about later)

My favorite sight of the day would probably be something called Trajan's Column. I'm not exactly sure why this was one of my favorites. Maybe it was how we came upon it...we were making our way through the winding city streets, which was a little hard because everything was written in Italian. We knew we were close, but we weren't quite sure if our senses were right. Then, all of a sudden, we look up and see it peeking through two buildings. This was the view we saw as we walked closer.


On Trajan's Column, Trajan (who, if I remember right, was emperor of Rome when Rome was in it's best days as a ruling city) Basically, Trajan's "lifetime as emperor" is carved out on this column...kinda like a picture story book spiraling from bottom to top.


We also climbed a tall governmental building and looked out over the city. It wasn't extremely high up, but it gave us a good idea of where some of the key ruins were in relation to each other. And, we aslo had our first taste of Italy's famous gelatto...so good!!

While I'm going through and telling about my favorite parts of each day, I figure I should also write about what Derrick remembers most, too. He says that his memories of his first day in Rome was how much of the past was still left amongst the modern in the city. A lot of times ancient cities don't last the test of time and make it to still be cities in our modern day. He was pretty impressed how Rome "protected" it's ancient-ness, and in most cases, built the "new" right up next to the "old" without intruding on it.


This is the Pantheon.

Looking at it from the back, you can see how the ancient-day street level is still preserved and kept for people to see, while modern-day street level has been built up around it.

And, Derrick was also impressed with Steve our first day (and throughout the rest of the trip) He was amazed that Steve pretty much knew where he was going and what he was doing...and the times when we began to question if he really did know what he was doing, he would always end up finding the place, or getting us where we needed to go.