uploaded

Finally got all my pics from Rome uploaded to the Flickr page.

Rome

I would've posted this a few days ago, but Explus had a bunch of work waiting for me when I got back from vacation.

We met my mom and Mike in Rome for a week. They rented an apartment that was only 4 blocks from the Colosseum, so it was right in the middle of the city and a perfect spot to walk to anywhere from. What we didn't realize when we were planning the trip is that we'd be there during the week of Easter. I think we would've gone somewhere else if we had known, but I'm glad we didn't. Certain areas were pretty crowded at times, but overall it wasn't that bad. 

We got there around noon on Good Friday, checked out the apartment (pretty nice except for the old ass framed cheetah hide on the living room wall), then started wandering around the city. We were all surprised by how much was actually there. We didn't expect to see so many ruins, and we didn't expect them all to be as massive as they were. We absolutely loved Athens, but this was so much better. There's just a ton more stuff to see right in the city than there is in Athens. I'm very glad we went there first, because I think Athens would have been kind of disappointing after seeing Rome.

As we started back to the apartment later that night we ran into the insane crowd in front of the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, which is where the pope was giving mass. I can't even guess how many people were there, but you would think that they'd be a little more polite and not pushing and shoving in the presence of holiness. We didn't stick around for much of that. The next day we were wandering around more and stepped into one of the churches to take a look (not sure which one since there are approximately 47,396 within two miles). There were a bunch of people with name tags and they were setting up sound equipment for something. So we looked around real quick and then started walking out. And then I heard a familiar voice over the speakers. I turned to see who was speaking and it was Michael York, the dude that played Basil, Austin Powers boss in the movies. We stood there and watched for a couple minutes, wondering why he was there, when all of a sudden out pops Jim Caviezel. Holy crap, it's Jesus! Turns out it was a rehearsal for something they were doing on Easter sunday. So we had only been in Rome for a day and a half and we had already seen the pope and Jesus.

Sunday we took a day trip to Pompeii, which was cooler than we expected. I didn't think there would be much there, but they've uncovered about 60% of the city. What was really amazing is the fact that 90% of everything there was original, just like it was when the volcano covered it in 25' of ash back in the day.

The rest of the trip was mostly just walking around through the city. We were there for 8 days and there's still plenty we haven't seen. The Colosseum was awesome, The Forum and Palantino were huge, the Pantheon was cool, and there are 100s (if not 1,000s) of statues, sculptures and monuments all over the place. I used up all 11 gigabytes of memory in my camera and still had to go back and delete about 50 photos so I could more shots. I'll be posting the pics to flickr in batches as I go through them. The first batch is up now, but keep checking over the next couple of days for more stuff.

Fort Bema

It was sunny and 66 degrees on saturday, so we decided to wander around outside someplace we haven't been to yet. I found a few small forts on the outskirts of Warsaw through Google Earth and have been meaning to check them out for a while, I was just waiting for nice weather. I can't really tell on the computer which of the forts was the coolest, so I just picked one and headed out. Well I picked correctly, because this place was awesome! It was a lot bigger than I expected, and you could actually walk through most of it. And the best part is that it's going to be a perfect spot for light painting. There are tunnels going all over the place and it's pitch black once you get about 20 feet away from the openings. I got a bunch of cool photos of it that I'll be putting on the flickr page, along with some shots from an abandoned building that we found on the way there. The building looks like it'll be another great place for light painting. We're not sure what it is, but it looks like they stopped in the middle of construction and just left it. It's two stories tall, with a basement that stretches out across the property. It's too bad I didn't know about this area when Ed and Alan were here, it would've been cool to take them out there.