Anna's Blog: October 2010

Bonjour Paris!

We've arrived into Paris and we are totally exhausted.... we've covered so many places over the last few days, I actually can't believe it and I'm so glad I'm writing this blog to record all my travels...
I look forward to sharing more of Paris with you, but for now, here's me by the River Seine putting my feet up for a few moments.So far, the world has not been too bad in my flat shoes!

Hope you've been enjoying my adventures so far... please leave a message (don't be shy) to let me know if you're following and enjoying! Thanks to all of you who have added comments or sent me emails! Mes amis, miss you all.

Best of the rest - Rome

Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, beautiful cobbled streets, delicious food....

Spanish Steps

Fontana Trevi

Best coffee bar in Rome?

According to our guide, this little bar serves the best coffee in town...
Was it good? Oh yes, it was heavenly delicious.....

Ancient Rome

On day 2, we decided to spend exploring the Ancient part of Rome, again with Grazia as our guide. I'm so fascinated by ancient Roman civilisation - whenever there's a documentary about it on TV, I'll definitely watch it! The achievements of the Roman empire were so impressive - and to think that they had sophisticated social systems like laws, taxes, markets combined with advanced engineering feats - all over 2,000 years ago. If the Roman empire had not fallen into its demise, I wonder how much more advanced our lives would be now?

So, our tour started at the Roman Forum. Again, I had been here before (way back in 2001) but this time, Grazia had a book that showed us what all the ruins would have looked like 2000 year ago. They were truly magnificent structures - temples, houses, arches, all in shiny white Carrara marble.
For example, this is what the ruins look like today (near the Temple of Saturn)..

and this is what they looked like in their hey-day...

Can you imagine what this whole area would have looked like if you were a Roman citizen so many years ago? Would have been enormously impressive!!!!

After the Roman Forum, we climbed up to Palantine Hill which is where a number of Roman emperors built their palaces. Above is some cornice detail which is an example of how elaborate the palaces would have been. The emperor had grand dining rooms, private baths, his own fighting stadium arenas - it was an opulent life!

Emperor's private baths

And he also had direct access to the huge circus maximus where chariots raced. Again, it's hard to imagine now (it's just a bare grass field now) but it looked amazing when it was built.

After this, we made it to the Colosseum where there must have been a million other tourists....

Here are some of our favourite shots to share... probably very cliche for those of you who have been but for those who haven't, enjoy!

Our ancient Rome tour ended at the Pantheon - a real amazing engineering feat - a perfect half dome built almost 2,000 years ago.

St Peter's Basilica - the grandest and biggest cathedral in the world!

After our tour of the Musei Vaticani, we were taken into St Peter's through the special VIP guides entrance, thereby bypassing the ridiculous line up - yeah!

Michelangelo's Pieta - now behind bullet proof glass to stop future attacks by crazy people...

The dome is 42m wide, just a little shorter than the Pantheon's - that was a little cheeky from Michelangelo who, when asked by the church to design the dome, didn't want the dome to be wider than than the Pantheon's (which was from Pagan origins).

All the 'paintings' (above) in the cathedral are actually in the Vatican Museum - what you see here are actually replicas made of mosaics!!! Each tile is 1cm square - imagine the work involved in recreating these masterpieces by hand with tiles - including matching up the tile & paint colours.... one of the Popes decided that the paintings would deteriorate if they were left exposed so he had them all relocated into the museum so they could be preserved and had these replaced with mosaics which would last pretty much forever... wow!

What a great tour! This is a shot with our guide, Grazia.

Rome - lots of art and history

After a very smooth train ride from Florence, we arrived into Rome for a whirlwind two days. This is my second visit to Rome but Steve's first time so I was really keen to make sure Steve saw all the must-see's. The hotel suggested we use a private guide to get us around to see everything in our limited time... it wasn't a cheap option but it was definitely ended up being such an amazing experience. We were so lucky with our guide, Maria Grazia, she was excellent and after she took us around Rome, we left with a really deep level of appreciation of the city and its history - much much more than what you could get from a guidebook or internet. During our tour, we learnt from Gracie that to be an accredited guide in Rome, you have to pass a whole heap of tests so you really have to know EVERYTHING there is to know about Rome and its history. So, when you have private guide, you don't just get to relax and leave everything to her, you get to learn so much more.

So, first place we visited was the Vatican - we were taken through the Musei Vaticani. Last time I came here, I remember zooming through to get to the Sistine Chapel but this time, we were taken at a slower pace to view the art pieces on the way - basically all the stuff I missed last time!
Our guide showed us how art styles had changed over the years - from the medieval style (more 2 dimensional or flat style) to the Renaissance style which used shadows, drapery, light and colour to create depth and perspective.

Medieval style - but showing signs of renaissance style with draping detail and depth

Early renaissance

Continuing on, we saw many other pieces including this beautiful one by Raphael.

We passed a corridor of Roman busts - did you know that in the ancient Roman time, every citizen had to have a bust carved of them as a record of their identity (obviously way before the days of digital cameras....)??? And did you also know that scientific analysis has also shown that these busts and statues were painted with paint or make up so they were actually coloured rather than the plain white stone which we normally seen? Obviously due to the time passed, none of this colour survived.

Imagine these busts having full colour paint on them!

We also saw some amazing tapestries - all hand sewn...

Along the Room of Maps - it was insanely crowded but look at the detail in the ceiling... it contains maps of all the regions making up the Italy in the 1500's (which wasn't actually unified at the time). The colour in this room was dazzing.

Another famous piece in the collection - the School of Athen painted by Raphael. This painting depicts all the famous artists of the Renaissance period (Raphael's peers) as Greek philosophers. In the middle is Michelangelo as Heraclitus which was painted as an afterthought after Raphael walked around the Vatican and saw Michelangelo midway through his Sistine Chapel ceiling.