Ancient Rome, Christian Rome, and the restored Gosple of Jesus Christ

Coloseum * Moses * Roman Forum * Holy Stiars * San Giovani * Rome LDS chapel -

10 miles, 62 flights of stairs

We started out our day in pagan Rome visiting the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Both really cool. We were on a tour of the Colosseum with a darling Italian girl that had such a thick accent and the listening radios were so bad we couldn't understand a thing. I quickly learned that Charlie needed the camera to be entertained. All of today's pictures are ones he took. I had to delete about 100 fuzzy ones as well as the pictures of the Army Jeeps and soldiers with guns - most fascinating for Charlie. The Roman Forum was amazing. The kids really liked it, but they were getting hungry and tired so we did our "giro" of the forum quickly and went home for our afternoon nap, something we have enjoyed each day now. In between the Colosseum and Forum we snuck up to Saint Peter's in Chains to see the Moses. Eric ran into a Priest from Toledo Spain and we had a great chat with him. At the end he offered a blessing upon us. We ran into him again later on in the day at San Giovani.

After the nap we took the kids to the Holy Stairs by San Giovani. It's been very interesting for them to experience Catholicism up close and in personal. I think they are learning to respect other faiths, even if it's different. After the Holy Stairs (which by the way, is where Pilgrims climb, on their knees a staircase believed to have been where the Savior walked before his crucifixion), we saw San Giovani and had some gelato - our favorite to date - at RivaReno. To end the evening we traveled some distance before finding the Rome "chapel" where I was a missionary. Lucky for us, someone was there to open the door and let us walk around. It's too bad we won't be here for a Sunday, but church will be great wherever we go in Italy.

My daughters think they need to use my keyboard each night for their own blogs (I didn't realize they planned to blog while we were gone) so my posts are going to be short while we share the keyboard. Perhaps when we leave the city and move to a slower place of living, I'll get more keyboard time.

A note about our apartment. A small 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom with galley kitchen smaller than my closet on the 3rd floor of an apartment building sandwiched between 2 leather shops on a really cool street 5 minutes from Piazza Navona and 10 minutes from the Pantheon. It has twisting Roman streets just as you would imagine. Our windows are open all the time and there's a nice breeze as well as constant sounds from the restaurants below us. We like it though. It's prefect and puts us right in the middle of things.