3 years later

And I love him dearly.

Thank you Big Guy for being the bestest husband evah.

I'm still wading through the Italy pictures, finding it hard to find the time to sort through them. I swear that camera was glued to my face the whole time we were there. And I'm so glad it was because there was so much to take in my brain couldn't possibly hold all the wonders I saw.

I've decided to pick some pictures from each day to show you. And tell you about.

Day 1

After a 23 hour journey we arrived in Rome around 7am on Christmas Eve. This was in the first batch of pictures I took as I rounded street corners and gasped every time I turned my head. Rome blew me away; living in Australia we don't have any buildings older than a couple of hundred years, no architectural styles before Georgian. Rome is a pastiche, a blend of the ancient and the relatively new (relative in a millenial sense). Astounding and intensely beautiful.

The Pantheon.  Just getting there was a trip and a half due to all the things we saw on the way (including a tiny little church - Santa Maria Maddalena - whose beautiful interior had us enthralled for ages). The Pantheon is enormous. So VERY big. How those ancient people managed it is beyond me. It's been rebuilt over time, redecorated and renewed as it was repurposed.

 

Everywhere one turns in the Pantheon, the view is spectacular. And because it's being used as a church today there's a mix of the ancient and the not-so-ancient. It's like mini-Rome. This apse holds the Chapel of the Crucifixion and the wall surrounding the cross is the original Roman wall. From 126AD. The cross is 1400's.  Those old walls. I desperately wanted to feel them.

 

And then I did. Do you think that nail is old? I did.

I'm in love with old. And with Rome.

A friend of mine who had recently returned from Italy said that she disliked Rome - too dirty and busy. But for me it's perfect. Possibly winter visiting is better than summer visiting, it wasn't too busy and it wasn't dirty.

Mi amore Roma.