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Post by RangoA@live.com on Jun 26, 2008 0:17:17 GMT -5
 Once, we got going - everything happened extremely quickly with our trip. My favorites countries after England and France (although I liked them all) were Italy and Greece. While in Italy, we stopped in Venice and took gondola rides in the canals around a city that is/was below sea level. The canals were used for trade and transit of people for hundreds of years and when we rode around on them. They had an odor that was a little difficult to get used to. The gondola paddler gave everyone, there were two to three people per gondola, a bottle of italian wine. So, we sat and drank wine while we rode on the canals in Venezia. Venice was famous for the birth of the Renaissance, especially. We learned how that small city, in comparison to Rome, Florence, Naples, etc.), was an attraction for people whom were involved in bringing about the changes and growth of Italy and the surrounding countries into a peaceful and joyous long period of time. One interesting event we watched were people who blew glass and painted them in all kinds of designs and patterns. I bought a glass blown bell as a souvenir. Also, we went to Florence which wasn't very far from Venezia. Florencia was just as majestic and beautiful as Venice and my favorite part was going to the Uffitzi Museum. The Uffitzi had one of the best collections of all types of artwork, in the world. I liked the Renaissance painting sand sculptures from artists like Michelangelo, Rafael and Leonardo Da Vinci, just to name a few. Michelangelo's statue of David was right there at the entrance to the Uffitzi. You couldn't miss it. It stood about twelve feet tall with a base of two feet approximately beneath it. That museum was also too big to see in one day so our tour guide took us to the most important parts for us to learn and then we went to St. Mary's Cathedral. St. Mary's was at the time the third largest church in the world. The first largest was St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and second was St. Paul's Cathedral in London. St. Mary's had a large entrance before going into the cathedral itself. In that large entrance were buried Galileo, St. Thomas Aquinas and other well known historical figures. I went to mass there the next day when I had some free time and the mass was mostly in latin and italian. I still could follow along with the procession of the mass, however. That's what made it so new and wonderful to me. There is a large promenade (type) area outside St. Mary's and other churches and buildings in that area. I went to have cappuccino and talk to the people there. People, from what I understood, hung out there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Not only was that area very popular but it was a great way to get to know people whom were there at that time. We went to Rome, next. Roma was as I expected grand, unbelievable and an very important historical city. Rome had another church, I think it was St, Mathew's or St. Mark's that had another sculpture of Michelangelo's in it. That was the statue of Moses. I got to see it and go into the Coliseum where we were told that over the centuries there was so much traffic and with the changes in weather had deteriorated the Coliseum so much that romans thought it was just going to dwindle down into nothing and were taking measures to curb traffic (such as having people ride motorbikes instead of automobiles) and keeping traffic as far away from the Coliseum as possible. We went to the Vatican and spent the whole day there. We went into St. Peter's Cathedral and another Michelangelo sculpture was inside, to the right as we were walking in, enclosed in climate-controlled, bullet proof glass, named the Pieta. The Pieta was of Mary and her son Jesus with her holding him in her arms after he died and was taken down from the cross. I prayed to the Pieta as soon as walked in, there was an area for people to kneel and pray if they wanted too. Inside St. Peter's, we learned that in Roman Catholicism St. Peter was the first Vicar of Christ. St. Peter was the rock on which Jesus would build and did build his church. St. Peter was described to us as having been crucified upside down right where St. Peter's Basilica stood, the second building of it being that the first was destroyed by invading armies to the Roman Empire, and no one could give mass at St. Peter's except the Pope. Then we went into the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel had the famous ceiling which was also painted by Michelangelo and his proteges. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was losing its colors and we learned that it was going to be painstakingly restored, as much as possible. The Vatican museum was breathtaking. There were works of art from all over the world there, too. Then we took walks through the gardens in the Vatican, outside these some of these holy places, and they were just as beautiful as any gardens I had ever seen in my life. We made our way by bus from Rome to a port on the Adriatic Sea and took a ship overnight to Greece. We all in the tour shared cabins, usually two or three per cabin, and had dinner and partied on the ship overnight. We sailed into Greece the next day and made our way to Delphi. In Delphi, we saw the temple to Zeus and the temple to the Oracle and some other temples in that area of Delphi. From there, we went to Athens. In Athens, we went to the Acropolis, the Prado (named something like that, I forgot the name of it) however it was large village below the Acropolis where people shopped, drank, ate and had fun. It was like the Greenwich Village of Athens. We took a boat to one of the greek islands, next. The island of Hydra is where we went. We stayed for one or two nights in Hydra. It was fun going to the beach there and going to a disco near our hotel where we had a lot of danced and drank all night.
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Once, we got going - everything happened extremely quickly with our trip. My favorites countries after England and France (although I liked them all) were Italy and Greece. While in Italy, we stopped in Venice and took gondola rides in the canals around a city that is/was below sea level. The canals were used for trade and transit of people for hundreds of years and when we rode around on them. They had an odor that was a little difficult to get used to. The gondola paddler gave everyone, there were two to three people per gondola, a bottle of italian wine. So, we sat and drank wine while we rode on the canals in Venezia. Venice was famous for the birth of the Renaissance, especially. We learned how that small city, in comparison to Rome, Florence, Naples, etc.), was an attraction for people whom were involved in bringing about the changes and growth of Italy and the surrounding countries into a peaceful and joyous long period of time. One interesting event we watched were people who blew glass and painted them in all kinds of designs and patterns. I bought a glass blown bell as a souvenir. Also, we went to Florence which wasn't very far from Venezia. Florencia was just as majestic and beautiful as Venice and my favorite part was going to the Uffitzi Museum. The Uffitzi had one of the best collections of all types of artwork, in the world. I liked the Renaissance painting sand sculptures from artists like Michelangelo, Rafael and Leonardo Da Vinci, just to name a few. Michelangelo's statue of David was right there at the entrance to the Uffitzi. You couldn't miss it. It stood about twelve feet tall with a base of two feet approximately beneath it. That museum was also too big to see in one day so our tour guide took us to the most important parts for us to learn and then we went to St. Mary's Cathedral. St. Mary's was at the time the third largest church in the world. The first largest was St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and second was St. Paul's Cathedral in London. St. Mary's had a large entrance before going into the cathedral itself. In that large entrance were buried Galileo, St. Thomas Aquinas and other well known historical figures. I went to mass there the next day when I had some free time and the mass was mostly in latin and italian. I still could follow along with the procession of the mass, however. That's what made it so new and wonderful to me. There is a large promenade (type) area outside St. Mary's and other churches and buildings in that area. I went to have cappuccino and talk to the people there. People, from what I understood, hung out there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Not only was that area very popular but it was a great way to get to know people whom were there at that time. We went to Rome, next. Roma was as I expected grand, unbelievable and an very important historical city. Rome had another church, I think it was St, Mathew's or St. Mark's that had another sculpture of Michelangelo's in it. That was the statue of Moses. I got to see it and go into the Coliseum where we were told that over the centuries there was so much traffic and with the changes in weather had deteriorated the Coliseum so much that romans thought it was just going to dwindle down into nothing and were taking measures to curb traffic (such as having people ride motorbikes instead of automobiles) and keeping traffic as far away from the Coliseum as possible. We went to the Vatican and spent the whole day there. We went into St. Peter's Cathedral and another Michelangelo sculpture was inside, to the right as we were walking in, enclosed in climate-controlled, bullet proof glass, named the Pieta. The Pieta was of Mary and her son Jesus with her holding him in her arms after he died and was taken down from the cross. I prayed to the Pieta as soon as walked in, there was an area for people to kneel and pray if they wanted too. Inside St. Peter's, we learned that in Roman Catholicism St. Peter was the first Vicar of Christ. St. Peter was the rock on which Jesus would build and did build his church. St. Peter was described to us as having been crucified upside down right where St. Peter's Basilica stood, the second building of it being that the first was destroyed by invading armies to the Roman Empire, and no one could give mass at St. Peter's except the Pope. Then we went into the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel had the famous ceiling which was also painted by Michelangelo and his proteges. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was losing its colors and we learned that it was going to be painstakingly restored, as much as possible. The Vatican museum was breathtaking. There were works of art from all over the world there, too. Then we took walks through the gardens in the Vatican, outside these some of these holy places, and they were just as beautiful as any gardens I had ever seen in my life. We made our way by bus from Rome to a port on the Adriatic Sea and took a ship overnight to Greece. We all in the tour shared cabins, usually two or three per cabin, and had dinner and partied on the ship overnight. We sailed into Greece the next day and made our way to Delphi. In Delphi, we saw the temple to Zeus and the temple to the Oracle and some other temples in that area of Delphi. From there, we went to Athens. In Athens, we went to the Acropolis, the Prado (named something like that, I forgot the name of it) however it was large village below the Acropolis where people shopped, drank, ate and had fun. It was like the Greenwich Village of Athens. We took a boat to one of the greek islands, next. The island of Hydra is where we went. We stayed for one or two nights in Hydra. It was fun going to the beach there and going to a disco near our hotel where we had a lot of danced and drank all night.