Waking up in Rome, the view outside the girls' window in our apartment. Each apartment complex has a gated entrance, ours is nice because it opens to a courtyard too.

 My little Italian lady who has the best nectarines, peaches, and cherries. We buy from her on a daily basis. Isn't she cute?

                 Every morning, three or four stops, fruit, bread, meats & cheeses, back home.

                                                          My new best Italian friend

 The neighbors laundry. Notice Italian underwear is dark. I don't think they wear much white of anything over here. Tanner was helping me put out the laundry rack the other day while I was gathering the load of laundry. He comes running back in and says in a panic, "Some crazy Italian lady is talking to me." I go out and there is a neighbor on her stoop washing her face and tells me that she was trying to help him set up the laundry rack. Of course she speaks English and hopefully didn't hear him call her the crazy Italian lady. I think the white soap all over her face while she was talking to him threw him off a little.

 The horses on top of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, Italy's first king. He built himself a really big monument, he must have been related to Julius Caesar somehow because this thing is huge. You are only seeing about a quarter of it in this picture. The center of the monument sits Greek Goddess Nike, the goddess of victory. Yes, that is where Nike got its name and the swoosh is representative of her wings, turned upside down. Capitalism at its best.

 This is just one of many churches with domes that literally dot every corner and niche that you can find. If the Italians were at a loss as to what to build, they built a church. Interestingly, they even built them in the Jewish Ghetto that we toured on our bike tour with Marco. During the German occupation Marco called it, the Jews were rounded up and sent to a ghetto in Rome that had no synagogues. The churches in the ghetto were some of the biggest in town ironically. This is where they waited until they were shipped off to concentration camps, a sad part of history.

We asked Marco why there were Egyptian obelisks in Rome. He said back in the day when someone conquered an area, they would return with souvenirs. Someone drug this back and stuck it atop a monument. This is a sixth-century B.C. Egyptian obelisk taken as a trophy by Augustus after his victory in Egypt over Mark Antony and Cleopatra. I am glad we just bring back t-shirts.

 This is what the whole city is like. In the middle of everything there are ruins. These are some columns from ancient roman structures in the Forum. The Forum was the center of ancient Rome.

 A larger view of the ruins with two church domes in the background. You just can't get enough of the architecture here.

 Tanner, Kylie, and Mom on the streets of Rome. We love all the cobblestone roads. No asphault, all cobblestone or bricklaid.

This is a closeup of another souvenir. I wonder how they transported these since bubblewrap was not invented. It must have been a serious undertaking.