I'm almost too embarrassed to blog this for fear of judgment, but we went to another Catacomb today. I find them very creepy, but my family think they're cool. This place was the most decorative of the 3 we've seen, small but it's amazing what you can do with a well placed skull or pelvis.... There were 5 rooms where the bones were used in all sorts of ways, including chandeliers out of pelvises and ribs. You're not allowed to take photos, but true to form, Ben snapped two before we were told off.
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| These are skeletons of Monks from the order. |
Creepy
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| This is the church above the catacomb |
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| with a sensational ceiling fresco |
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| Then we went to Villa Borghese and had a wander through the park to the museum. We didn't know that you have to pre book your visit, you can't just rock up and pay and go in the way you do everywhere else in the world... |
When you spend every living moment with the same 3 people for five weeks, you feel like they're in your face all the time - literally! I think we are ready to come home. Delirium is starting to set in....
From Borghese we went back to the Spanish Steps and went inside the Church to stumble across our highlight of the day. There were a group of Brothers standing to the left at the front of the church and a group of Nuns standing to the right and they were singing in response to each other and together. There were about 20 of them but it sounded like there was 100 of them. The sound was angelic. It was truly superb. I took video footage but forgot to take a photo.
Olivia overheard a lady speaking on the phone with an Australian accent and she said 'Mum! They're Australian!" The lady heard Olivia and then came over for a chat. We were explaining that we're getting a bit homesick now that even the sound of an Australian voice is bringing us undone. Anyway, we got chatting and they told us that they didn't know about the Beautification and that they went and it was wonderful. They said they were going back tomorrow (and we're going too) and that they picked up their tickets for the Audience this morning. This put Ben and I into a spin because we were just planning on rocking up tomorrow. We decided we'd better be safe than sorry and get tickets to the audience too, so we hopped into a taxi and went over to the Vaticano.
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| How cool is this water fountain? It runs so you can fill your water bottle, but then if you stop the flow, the water pops up from the top so you can drink from it. |
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| What a great time to be here. Pope John Paul II fever has hit as his permanent place in St Pere's Basilca was unveiled on Sunday. |
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| This is the new place of rest for Pope John Paul II and his Bronze statue. The lines were so long. But it was so cool to have seen this. |
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| The photo of the statue didn't come up very detailed but it is very imposing and really has a great likeness to him. Lovely. |
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| My count says 146 Popes since St Peter who was crucified in 67AD |
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| We got our tickets for the Audience with the Pope for tomorrow and we've seen the Basilica. One more day to go before we're back on a plane coming home. Can't believe it's nearly over. |
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