The Journey Home

The Basilica of St. Peter's, cleverly cropped to exclude the approximately 1.5 million people who were swarming all over the square.

Our week in Rome has gone by too quickly and we'll be heading home - or at least as far as Vicenza - tomorrow. Our last couple of days have been spent walking around the historic center and taking in some of the sites. Helps to have semi-mastered the local metro and bus systems - saved a lot of wear and tear on these old legs to be able to hop on and hop off the various forms of public transportation...something most of the tourists don't seem to take advantage of. On our rides around the city on the local buses we seemed to be the only non-locals...a pretty good sign actually

Anyway, here's the photo documentation of the last couple of days;

The Pantheon - originally built in 26 BC by Marcus Agrippa and later rebuilt in around 176 AD by the Emperor Hadrian using the original blueprints. The inscription on the facade means "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, built this during his third consulship". He actually built it to commemorate his victory over Marc Antony & Cleopatra at Actium in 30 BC - the sea battle that sealed primacy over the Roman empire for his friend and mentor, Augustus. 

The monument to Victor Emmanuel in Piazza Venezia...the man who united Italy in the 19th century. It's even more spectacular at night.

And the Trevi Fountain - still beautiful (and a tourist magnet) after several hundred years.


We spent yesterday evening at the Vatican Museums - surely one of the most amazing things you will ever see - capped off with a 30 minute stop in the Sistine Chapel to gawk at Michelangelo's ceiling and the frescoes above the altar. The place really is overwhelming, with one delight after another assaulting your senses as you work your way thru the various buildings and chapels. Entire rooms painted by Raffael are just a prelude for the time spent in the main chapel. It was nice, too, to have been able to do it as part of their special night program - something they only offer on Friday evenings during the Autumn season. Not very crowded at all, especially after we high-stepped it at the entrance at opening time to get ahead of the main body of tourists who had queued up for the night exhibit. 

The title of this blog posting is "The Journey Home". We hope it doesn't need to be updated later to "The Ordeal Trying to Get Home". This Space A thing is great when it clicks, but there's always the possibility of unforeseen circumstances that can result in long delays trying to catch a hop home. Even getting to Ramstein on Monday (after a night in Vicenza) may be a challenge. The forecast for Innsbruck - one of the stops the shuttle bus makes along the way as it crosses thru the Alps, is for snow starting today and continuing thru late Monday...just the time we'd be passing thru. So...we're staying flexible and will just take it as it comes. If we get stuck in Vicenza for a few days, well ... there are worse fates. The good news is that Cat 6 traffic (ie retirees like us) has been moving pretty well out of Ramstein back to the US. We hope to snag a flight that goes all the way to McChord, but will certainly settle for one going to Dover, BWI, or Charleston (the more likely stops), since from any of those we can catch a reasonably cheap flight to Seattle. At any rate, this is where the "adventure" part of Space A travel really begins... so stay tuned.