Wow! I can’t believe it has been such a long time since I have written. I’m not sure how that happened. Oh well…here we are now. And I have just had a fun adventure!
All of the sudden, after a bunch of time being at home and me thinking that I would never go anywhere new again, The Lady told me that I needed to pack because we were going to roam. I was excited, but I wanted to know where exactly we were going to roam. Did I need short sleeves or long sleeves? And, how long would we be roaming in this place that I did not know? The Lady told me we were going to roam Italy…and also grease and turkey.
Italy?! I looked on a map. Italy is a long way from Texas! The Lady told me that we were going on an airplane with Mr. Jim and Mr. Sepeherson. (Mr. Guy doesn’t like to travel far away from home, though he and The Lady did go to Italy a long time ago, before they had me.) This sounded like fun so I packed my shirts and we went to the airport.
I was a little nervous about getting on the airplane because the people at the airport did not spell very well.
They said we were going to Rome…then I thought that maybe that is how they spell roam in Italian. The Lady told me that Rome is the name of a city in Italy. Oh! So we are going to roam Rome, Italy!
We spent a long time on the airplane. I slept for almost the whole trip. I went to sleep at dinnertime and woke up a lunchtime the next day when we landed in Italy. I didn’t roam around on the airplane so I didn’t find any breakfast. I guess packing for my roam trip wore out this little monster.
When we finally got off of the airplane, a nice man met us and drove us in his fancy car to our hotel to drop our suitcases. Then he took us to roam Rome. We went all over the city and saw lots of fanous and old things. We saw places that are way older than Mr. Guy and The Lady!
Our first stop was The Colosseum. It was a big round building.
The Lady said that it is almost 2000 years old. I have lived with Mr. Guy and The Lady for 10 years and that feels like a long time!
Two thousand years seems like a really, really long time to this furry little blue and orange monster. I wonder what I will look like in two thousand years? Will I be crumbly like The Colosseum?
The Lady said that now people come just to look at The Colosseum, but back when it wasn’t SO old, it was used for gladiator hunts, animal hunts, executions, and plays based on Roman mythology. Most of those things sound kind of scary to me. I am glad that I am visiting The Colosseum now when people are just looking rather than 2000 years ago!
I saw Trevi Fountain.
There is a tradition that if you turn your back to the fountain and throw a coin over your right shoulder into the water you will get to again roam Rome.
A lot of people throw money into the this fountain every year, 1.5 million dollars in United States money. The numbers are very big in roam Rome. This one has more zeros than I have claws to count them! It is good that there are so many coins thrown into Trevi Fountain because they are all used to help the poor people who also roam Rome.
We also visited some churches. I like visiting churches because they give me happy memories because on the day that Mr. Guy and The Lady found me, we all went to a church together.
One of the churches that we went to was the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Wall. That seems like a strange name to me. Outside the wall?
The outside of the church is pretty, but inside the walls was beautiful.
The Lady tried to explain to me the importance of this church, but that was too much for me to understand. I asked her to write a little bit about it here. Maybe you will understand! I was happy just looking at all of the amazing things inside the church.
The founders of Christianity were Saints Peter and Paul. Peter, not a Roman citizen, was executed for his faith by being crucified upside-down (at his request, as he felt unworthy of being executed in the same way as Jesus). Roman citizens were legally protected against the more unpleasant execution methods, and so Saint Paul was beheaded at the site of this church, originally founded by Emperor Constantine, when he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. The name “Outside the Walls” refers to the Aurelian walls of the city (finished in 275), which successfully repelled many invaders, including the Saracens who, after conquering Sicily in 827, attacked Rome in 846. Unfortunately, as the name implies, the original church built here was outside the walls, and was leveled. The rebuilt church is studded with glorious 13th-century mosaics that glimmer in the light, making a stroll through it feel like walking inside a giant gilded and bejeweled reliquary.
We went to another place called the fat chicken. “Wait,” I said to The Lady. “I thought you said we were going to see a greasy turkey???” I guess she got confiused about chickens and turkeys! And I don’t know why we had to fly so long on an airplane just to see a greasy turkey. We have those in Texas. And it is not even close to Thanksgiving so why are we even talking about turkeys?! In case you are wondering, we also have fat chickens in Texas.
We got to the fat chicken place and I didn’t see any chickens…or turkeys.
All I saw was a few pigeons in the middle of a big plaza surrounded by more pretty buildings.
When I asked The Lady about the fat chicken, she said, “Not the fat chicken, The Vatican!!!” I wondered if that was the chicken’s name. Nope. It is a big important church. Once I learned more about this place, I thought it was pretty cool that I got to visit.
After seeing The Vatican, we went to another very old building whose name had something to do with keeping your panties on. That sounded a littlle embarrassing!!! I don’t even roam around home without panties; I surely didn’t need to be reminded not to roam Rome without them!!! I did need, however, to be reminded that this building’s name is actually The Pantheon not panties on. It is also is a church.
We saw lots of Rome on our car ride. I enjoyed it, but I was a very tired little monster after our four hour tour. (Those three words look funny together!) I was ready to go rest at our hotel.
And this is only the beginning of our adventure! Stay tuned for more.