Rome – July 9-11

Heidi and I have been camping at a campsite on the outskirts of Rome for the last three days. For some reason, maybe it’s because of the movies or my high school used old text books, but the place isn’t as old as I figured it would be. It’s strange because you’ve got ruins dated to 4 B.C. and then you’ve got brand new office buildings right next to it. I guess you need new buildings, or all of Rome would be considered ruins. Yesterday we went on a “hop on – hop off” bus tour. We were able to see The Coliseum, some ancient ruins, old churches and other things on our 11 stop tour. We went inside the Sistine Chapel and saw Michelangelo and Raphael’s work. It was quite impressive, but the heat and long lines made viewing the chapel a bit anticlimactic after everything was said and done.
My personal favorite happened today. We went to the San Callisto Catacombs. Because of persecution and Roman rules, Christian martyrs and others were buried in underground tombs on the outskirts of the city. They would worship God through music, painting, communion and the teaching of God’s Word in these catacombs. It was thrilling to be in the very spot of some of the great men and women of the faith. Unfortunately because of vandals and age the tombs have been emptied and empty holes are the only thing left.

Heidi and I also saw some random things that we thought were quite interesting. First, when we were in the Vatican Museum (where you have to go to get to the Sistine chapel). It was run by the Roman Catholic Church. The amount of Greek Mythology and Iconography that was in the Vatican was sickening. Things that God told the Israelites to destroy and things that were detestable to God were clearly on display throughout the Vatican. Also, while Heidi at the Sistine Chapel we saw signs saying that it was closing early, which we found out later was because the Obama’s were going to be visiting it later that day…ha ha, we saw it first! We even saw the presidential motorcade pull out of the Vatican. Unfortunately they blocked the road off to everybody until all 25 or so vehicles made it out, causing us to miss our bus.

We decided to camp one more night in Rome, so we will be heading out of Rome on our way to Spain tomorrow morning. I don’t know when the next time we will be able to post, so until next time!
(This is now Heidi) So our camping village had a band last night, who played all oldies, which all but a few were in English. They played some songs from the movie “Grease” which I know and really enjoy. Part way thru TJ and I realized that the lead singer didn’t speak any English. So he did pretty good mimicking the songs, but quite a few times you could tell he was just making some sort of sound like that was similar to the song but his sentences didn’t make sense at all! It was pretty great.