St Peter’s Basilica, Lego, and more art

We are having a great time in Rome. Here are some photos in a random order

Steve had a great time at the Rome Lego store, even buying about 100 black bricks for our build for the Canberra Brick Show in November (we need 5000).

We went to an AMAZING “Impressionism & Beyond” at the Archaeolgy Museum. This was one of my favourite paintings, it is by Picasso (I love it because you can see him starting to explore different planes in his painting process)

Recycling in the Vatican (we thought of Jacqui with this)

In any Australian museum this would be a centre piece of an exhibition, but this piece by Giovanni del Biondo is next to the fire extinguisher in the Pinacoteca (painted in 1391). They have so much great art in the Vatican Museums.

The sun was setting as we started our way out of the Vatican Museums. We went a second time, much later in the day so I could see the Pinacoetca, which we’d missed on our last visit due to the crush of people. This time we went in 2 hours before they were closing and it was much easier to get around the museums.  When we arrived to go through security, the staff recognised us from last week (well, they recognised Skye)

Skye has been fantastic in how she has handled being next to the wheelchair. 

Rome has these great drinking water fountains to refill your bottle (they have them in Florence too). We couldn’t pass up getting Vatican water in our bottle. 

We bought some fresh tortellini from Mercarto Trionfale and cooked it in our apartment for lunch.

Skye wanted to play with Alice’s Paddington Bear. 

The rooftops in Rome have a lot of TV antennas and satellite dishes - because the buildings are so old and build so solidly, the connection cable has to go down the outside of the building (you might need to zoom in to see them). We thought of Lachlan when we saw this. 

We had pizza from Alice Pizza, so had to send Alice a photo of Paddington eating Alice Pizza.

Yellow Car!

A typical Roman breakfast - Cappuccino & Maritozzo (slightly sweet buns filled with whipped cream)

We thought we’d get to St Peter’s Bascilica as they opened at 7 (like Steve did on Saturday), but unfortunately there was a random closure of all people going into Vatican City, so we had to wait for about an hour in the cold - weather were still glad when we got to cross the border into Vatican City though)

St Peter’s Basilica is MASSIVE. The photos just don’t show the scale of how big it is. 

I had a go at the photo Steve had taken the day before. It’s made me look at statues in a whole different way. 

Our apartment is on the 5th floor, and we have a genuine european lift - complete with doors we have to close, and the fact that it is tiny. We only just fit with Steve, Skye, myself & the wheelchair (it isn’t wide enough to sit in the wheelchair).