When in Rome...

...see all the things!  We certainly tried to.  On Friday, we checked out the Pantheon, which is awesome in and of itself but also as a bonus, it's free to visit, unlike so much of Rome.  We walked in during a church service, which is somewhat amusing since this building was originally constructed to honor all the gods of ancient Rome, but is now used to honor just one.  The original sculptures of the Roman gods have been replaced with figures important to Christianity.  It's a truly impressive structure that's been very well-preserved, probably thanks in large part to its continued use as a church:

St. Peter's Basilica (also free!) was awe-inspiring as well.  Like the School of Athens painting I mentioned in the last post, I had forgotten just how big this church is.  I know it's big, but it's hard to appreciate just how big until you're inside.  Rick Steves' audio tour said the distance from the entrance to the far wall behind the altar (straight ahead in the photo below) is two football fields.

And it contains Michelangelo's Pietà, which is beautiful:

We are both impressed, especially Paul, by how young Michelangelo was when he accomplished so many great works.  He sculpted both this piece and the famous David in his 20s.

We also walked past the building that everyone refers to as the "wedding cake" several times during our stay in Rome:

And visited the Trevi Fountain at night:

We sat there for quite a while waiting for it to get dark enough and were amused/annoyed watching all the guys (scam artists?) with instant print cameras (of incredibly poor quality, from what we could see) try to trick tourists into buying a photo.  They did this by volunteering (quite vehemently) to take photos for tourists using the tourists' cameras and then badgered the tourists into buying an instant photo from them.  One guy was particularly awful.  He was able to talk a tourist into a photo and then proceeded to force her to pay for a photo that showed pretty much none of the fountain - just the tourist.  They fought about it for quite a while.  

Communing with the Oracle

On Monday, Paul and I made the intimidating trek to Delphi.  It involved figuring out which bus station we needed, where the bus station was located (harder than it sounds), how to get to that bus station, and how to buy tickets. And also getting up ridiculously early since all the sites close at 3:00pm during the holidays, and it's a 3 hour bus ride with only a few time slots.

Luckily, we succeeded.  My boss is a huge Greek history buff and had loaned me The Oracle, and she and I both agreed that this is a must see site.  And it was - from the building housing the treasures given by the Athenians:

Where you can see writing and images carved on many of the marble stones in the walls:

To the stadium where the Pythian games were held to commemorate Apollo's defeat of the Python:

To the main attraction itself - the Temple of Apollo.  There, worshippers from all over the ancient world sought the Oracle's advice as to the will of Apollo.

And, as a bonus, the land around Delphi is beautiful!

"1,000 Years Older than Stonehenge"

After sleeping like the dead Wednesday night, we were much more awake yesterday.  We caught a tour bus to Brú na Bóinne a little before noon to see Knowth and Newgrange.  Constructed around 3200 B.C., much about these neolithic structures is unknown.  They were associated with death (bodies were found in them) as well as astronomical events (several of the passageways line up with the sun during the equinoxes).

The tour guides emphasized endlessly that these passage tombs are 500 years older than the pyramids and 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.  They were also excessively fond of saying that the art on the stones "was open to all of our interpretations and all of those interpretations were correct."  I'm not quite sure what our interpretations were, but whatever they were, they were the right ones.

Despite the repetition, the sites are pretty cool.  Knowth has many passage tombs and other mounds:

Newgrange has only one.  However, unlike Knowth, we were able to go inside it.  Of course, photography wasn't permitted so I don't have a picture.  We were also allowed to walk on top of this large mound to see where later civilizations had built small settlements (Newgrange is only about 80 meters in diameter, so when I say small, I mean small!). 

The amount of work it took to make these is impressive.  The large stones that lined the outside of the mounds (seen in the first picture above) were brought from a location 20 km away.  It is thought that they were rafted down the river and then log-rolled uphill over a considerable distance to the monument's location.  

Whatever their real purpose, clearly they were important structures.