Home again

Ashley and I are back from our Italy/Paris vacation. How about that picture up above? I'm calling it "Breakfast in Paris," and it's a great shot of things that characterized our trip: up with the sun, a budget breakfast (same as lunch) of bread and jam and oranges with water (especially note the classy toilet-paper plates!!), Africa debriefing in the form of daily doses of Malaria meds and stories, and as was typical of most days, Ashley was done, packed, ready for the day and taking pictures while my hair was still in a towel. Hey--someone has to be last.

We had 11 busy days, starting in Rome and ending in Paris. Here are a few highlights from each place:

ROME-Two words can sum up what we saw in Rome: Statues and Ceilings. That's it pretty much, save the Colosseum and the Forums, which I'll get to in a minute. We stood in line two hours to see the Vatican and the huge collection of Roman statues housed there.

An otherwise mundane statue is brought to life as Ashley demonstrates how the subject was probably standing when the statue was created...

The Cistine Chapel ceiling isn't supposed to be photographed and you all know what it looks like anyway. But there were lots of other nifty ceilings too:

But if you think ceilings are impressive, check out the tapestries! Painting a picture is small potatoes next to weaving one. These two were my favorite: The nativity and the part of the story where Herod orders all the baby boys to be killed in an attempt to kill Jesus. This one particularly shows strong emotions in the faces. I thought it illustrated well the old testament prophecy of Rachel weeping for her children.


But just cuz the tapestries were cool, doesn't mean I've given up my first love of paintings and there were plenty of larger than life paintings to admire. Whoever painted this one was nuts:


Well, I don't know about you, but I'm bored. So we'll pick this up tomorrow. Bye!