Churches

There are over 900 churches within Rome's city limits... here are my pictures from 4 of them.

St. Paul outside the walls. (one of the four main basilicas)

Beams of sunlight pouring in

There are more marble/ granite floors in Italy than carpet... way more.
I think I've seen 2 buildings with carpet and a few dozen that are marble or granite (basically every church or nice public building)

Altar looking back. On the left where the people are gathered are the steps leading down to where Saint Paul is entombed.

Smaller church called Santa Maria in Cosmedin

One of its two main attractions... the mouth of truth.
Long ago people would place their hand in the mouth to see if they were lying or not.
Turns out there was a guy with an ax on the other side of the wall and he decided if you kept your hand or not.

The other attraction... the head of St. Valentine

St. Mary Major

Large urn that is said to contain wood pieces of the True Cross.

Kate, Steph, and Julie outside Hard Rock. This ones for you Aunt Debbie!

On Sunday we got up early to go to the Vatican because on the last Sunday of every month the Vatican museums are free. Sadly we got on the wrong bus and ended up on the other side of town for a while so we didnt make it there until late morning. When we got to the Vatican the line for the museum was about a mile long (and this was only the part of the line we could see). So we just went into St. Peters and went to mass instead! (this was quite interesting being neither catholic or Italian... haha) There will be another blog sometime soon with the rest of my Vatican adventures.

Nave that can hold up to 60,000 people for mass.
Walls, floors, ceilings all marble. This place has more marble than a quarry.

Altar

Main Dome. To give you a sense of scale there are people walking around the rim of the dome up there... and you cant even see them in this picture

No the pope was not there, but he called and told me we could do lunch sometime next week.