Europe with Pictures. Finally

Hello family and friends! I am so sorry it has taken me forever to post pictures and stories on the Blog. We have been so busy since I got home with the mission, I haven't had a minute to sit down and just write about the WONDERFUL experience that I had. I am going to start of with and Italy post, then an England one, then a Paris one. I will try to be condensed, but who knows. This is more for my posterity than anything anyways, so if you don't want to read a saga, just enjoy the pictures. :)

Italy - Rome

Rome is this city full of romance, history, and so many people. This was the first city that we visited on our abroad, and oh man, it was PACKED with things for us to do and see. We were so busy just looking at all the ancient sights that it was impossible to be 'bored'. The first day we went to the Spanish steps and did a walking tour that included the Pantheon (amazing), Trevi fountain (also amazing, and cool, which was nice as it was very warm in Rome) and the streets of Rome.

(Spanish steps with Diana)

(Trevi Fountain)

(Pantheon Oculous)

Keisha and Reegan finally made it up with at the end of the day when they had this horrible experience with their flights and basically almost didn't make it to Rome! We were all so tired after basically staying up for 24 hours that by the end of this tour (which included some of the best gelato of the trip), we were exhausted, and just hit the hay.

Day 2 was a day I absolutely have to talk about. We saw all the ancient sights of Rome, and then went to the Borghese Palace which had the most amazing sculptures in it by Bernini.

(Colosseum)

(Constantine's Arch)

(This is Michelangelo's Moses)

On Saturday we took at trip to Naples/Pompeii. Pompeii was awesome! It was so interesting to see this pretty well preserved ancient town that wasn't Rome. It was so much bigger than I thought it would be, and it was so interesting to look at all the fresco's, buildings, and even people who were preserved from this time. It was dusty and old and I loved it. Naples however, was a scary experience for us. Naples is supposedly the birth place of Pizza, and so it is a tourist spot, but we just had a few hours there after this museum we went to, so we did not get to find the pizza that is delicious, instead we had to search around the train station for something, and it was one of the scariest experiences of my life! I was not able to hold in my fear, and at one point just looked up at the sky and kept walking as not to stare back at the people staring at me, or the men living on the side of the road with all the garbage. It was just a scary experience... yet now I look back on it with fondness because of how silly we were all being.

This is a picture of the "Ecstasy of St. Teresa" by Bernini. He is such a phenomenal sculptor. O man I was so excited to see this sculpture because of how much my high school art history professor, Mrs. Hughes, loved it. Now I get what she was talking about with the cloth thing. Bernini is a genius. We went to see a lot of the churches and the works inside of them like a lot of the Caravaggio paintings and sculptures of the early renaissance. It was awesome.

Our last day in Rome we went to the Vatican and saw all of these amazing sites there. Did you know that the Vatican is it's own country? I think that is crazy, but it is huge, and the pope does live there... Anyways, this is the top of St. Peter's Basilica, I took a lot of pictures inside of this building, but I am struggling with adding the pictures for some reason... So this is what you get. If you want more, I will e-mail them to you. :) Anyways, the thing that I thought was more impressive than this huge cathedral, is the Vatican itself! There was so much amazing stuff in there! Of course we couldn't take too many pictures inside, so i just didn't try. But we got to see the Augustus Prima Porta, Apollo Belvidere, Laocoon, Raphael's School of Athens, (and many more of his paintings), and of course the Sistine Ceiling!!! That was such an amazing experience, except guess what, I don't really care for Michelangelo's work because his anatomy is TOTALLY ridiculous. Sure, he understood what muscles could look like on strong men, but he adds so many that do not really exist, and all the women look like men. I don't appreciate that.

So that was Rome! I loved it! We saw a lot of awesome things, and even stayed up one night until 1:00 am looking at art!! (they had this late night "free museum" thing going, so we went to a modern art exhibit at about 11:00 at night. So adventurous ;) ) Next up, Florence.