Red Canyon, Utah

On Tuesday 8/5, as we approached Bryce Canyon from Salt Lake City, we arrived at Red Canyon. We now understand that some people get to Red Canyon and think its Bryce . The rock formations at Red Canyon are impressive.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

We were tired when we arrived at Bryce even though it was mid afternoon.  We decided to have lunch at the “cowboy Buffet” at Bryce City just outside the park and then go to visitor center. There we watched two movies about Bryce.  Then, we relaxed at our campsite in the National Park (North Campground). Our campsite was very nice, private and affordable – only $7.50 a night with our Senior National Parks pass.

The next morning we reserved seats on the afternoon 3.5 hour tour of southern Bryce viewpoints not on the regular bus shuttle. We spent the morning going to Mossy Cave and Fairyland viewpoints  on the east side of the park.

Bryce is a very spectacular place!

The next day, we visited Inspiration Point at Sunrise and we hiked along the canyon rim starting a short walk from our campsite. After we passed through a couple of the southern viewpoints, we took advance of the bus shuttle service to take us back to our campsite. We spent the afternoon taking showers and doing the laundry.

We visited Bryce Point viewpoint at Sunset.

We decided not to go to Zion National Park this trip. We will go there next fall or spring. Instead we headed for Lake Powell for an overnight on the beach there. From there we will to Flagstaff for a day and then home to Vail.

Papal Audience

We were up at 6:30 am to catch Metro to St Peters to meet our guide for Papal Audience.

When we got there, everywhere people were in long lines. It was overwhelming! We had directions that got us to the edge of St Peters but it was unclear exactly where our meeting point was. An intern with the tourist group doing our tour spotted us looking at maps. She asked what we were looking for. She brought us to the meeting point. We met a couple from England that we ended up sitting with. It was one big mob scene getting into the square. The guards took our water from our packs. These were two new jugs specially purchased for our trip, Caput!

My impressions of St Peters Square were mixed. It seemed smaller than I expected. Milly thought it what she expected.  Maybe I didn’t realize that St Peter’s was nestled between a lot of rather huge buildings.

I enjoyed getting to see the Pope do his ride among the people. I don’t think one would enjoy being Pope. There were a huge number of people there all pressing to see or touch him. The whole square was full and this scene repeats every Wednesday.

The guide was very good at discussing where St Peter’s was and what was happening. She left as the Pope appeared. He spoke in Italian. Italians liked what he had to say. He even joked a few times. We listened to the laughter and wondered what he said. It was not a very spirit filled experience on the surface. It did impress you this vast array of people from all over the world, most of whom were Catholics.

I am glad I came to be at the papal audience. I am not sure I would come again.  We did get a few views of the Pope. He really makes a few passes at various directions through the crowd. I am sure all got a glimpse of him at some point. Pope Francis is a great pope for the people and they know it.

 Castel S.Angelo

We found out that there was a transit workers strike. It must have started at 9 am since we took the metro in the morning to go to St Peters. While waiting at the audience, we took out maps and planned to visit different sites than orginally planned. It turned out that the Hop on/off buses were running to our relief. The other buses appeared to start up again at 3 pm.

Castel S. Angelo was originally built by Andrian to be his tomb. The Christians turned it first into a fortress and then a home for the Popes before St Peter’s was built in 15th and 16th centuries. Thus, there was quite a set of history revealed in this Castle and museum. There were also excellent views of Rome.

Pantheon, Plaza Navona & St Ignatius Church

Our Hop Bus driver suggested we get to the Pantheon after visiting Plaza Navona for lunch. We has some pizza and salad at an excellent restaurant in he plaza. The music rang though the air as our waiter help us through the menu. Pizza was great!

We got lost looking for the Pantheon. It took us a long time to find it. A group of four helped us by walking us to the right place!.

The Pantheon is certainly a wonderful site and not to be missed.

A friend of ours suggested that we had to see St Ignatius Church. In June, he had found the church by accident and it was a hidden gem! This also attracted me since I was Jesuit trained in high school and college. What he found by accident took us a long, long time to find on purpose! We saw it on maps but we always seemed to get lost. Finally we did find it. It was indeed quite impressive.

After visiting the church, we headed home, took showers and Fred took a nap. We were exhausted. Fred took a nap before we went to dinner.

We found a small restaurant in a basement a few blocks away. We had no recommendations just a hunch. We had a variety of foods. Fred had spaghetti carbonara and veal steak while Milly opted for sliced pork with fried potatoes. We shared vegetables for starter and with our meal. We had trouble finishing he liter of house red wine that was very good.

Galleria Borghese

We had a full day today. We were up in time for 7:30 cafe breakfast at Behive. We were on our way via bus to Galleria Borghese. We had a 9 am reservation for a 2 hour visit. We were told we had to check our bags including our camera. After we were inside, Fred asked an attendant how come there were some people taking pictures? It turns out that 2 months or so ago, Italy changed their laws allowing camera to be used without flash. So we have no pics to show except from the outside.

This place is absolutely fantastic! Fred was spellbound by the majesty of the Art work. This is an absolute must see for all who visit Rome!

After finishing our visit, we discovered that we could walk though the gardens to a Metro spot to catch a train to the National Museum our next stop. We had a great lunch in a wonderful outdoor patio across the street from the Museum .  We shared a vegetable Pizza and a chicken salad panini sandwich.

We added a visit to the Basilica of Mary & the Angels and Martyrs which is co-joined with the National Museum. They share the same walls.

Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs

This was quite a surprise! (See pictures) We saw this Church when we were in this square several days ago. It looked interesting so this time we decided to go into it before going to the national museum. This was a real inspiring place!

Roma National Museum

This was very, very disappointing! Fred has read that everyone should visit this museum to get the flavor of the whole Roman Empire period. There was an amazing array or artifacts, artifacts and more artifacts each with its own notes. This was probably an archaeologist’s heaven. It did provide a flavor of that history but it was too much detail with pulling it all together (IMO).

The best past was the Diocletian Baths. They has a movie presentation with a model of complex with ceiling lights that highlighted the part of the model being filmed at that moment so you could see what it looked like back in the days when 3,000 people were in the bath at once!  However, there was a huge door that people were using to get out to a court yard. The light from this open door prevented you for seeing the movie or lit model. Fred closed the door. An attendant opened the door. Fred discussed why this expensive presentation was there if you couldn’t see it. He talked italian only but Fred caught his drift. I’m in charge. He left and Fred locked the door until the movie was done to Milly’s scragrim. Som one cmae and tried to get back in. The person found there was another entrance and exit to the baths area.

When we were done, Fred decided that he would visit a couple of Churches while Milly would visit the next museum. We would meet up again at our room.

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (Mary Major)

Very Interesting Basilica devoted to the Virgin Mary!

Archbasilica of St. John Lateran

The Pope’s Church as Bishop of Rome!

Last night (10/3) in Rome, Milly and Fred went back to the excellent restaurant where they had eaten several days before. We had seen a man eating a steak dish that looked great. Milly and I ordered 2 different beef dishes, shared a salad and an Eggplant  parmigiana. The later was a real great dish. It was different that we expected. The beef steaks were outstnding! Great meal with great wine!

Fred met his objective if possible of visiting all of the Italy Papal Basilicas. Today’s post on Assisi will cover the 2 Papal Basilicas. Tomorrow’s post will cover the last one to be visited St Paul’s outside the walls. Prior posts covered the others:

Papal Basilicas 

The four major basilicas, together with the minor Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls were formerly known as “patriarchal basilicas”. Upon relinquishing in 2006 the title of Patriarch of the West, Pope Benedict XVI renamed these basilicas from “patriarchal basilicas” to “papal basilicas”.^[5] Those “patriarchal basilicas” were associated with the five ancient patriarchal sees of Christendom (the Pentarchy):^[6]

• St. John Lateran was associated with Rome (Patriarch of the West),
• St. Peter’s with Constantinople (Latin Patriarch of Constantinople),
• St. Paul’s with Alexandria (Latin Patriarch of Alexandria),
• St. Mary Major with Antioch (Latin Patriarch of Antioch),
• St. Lawrence with Jerusalem (Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem).

The title of “patriarchal basilica” (now, since 2006, “papal basilica”) was also officially given to two churches associated with Saint Francis of Assisi situated in or near his home town of Assisi, Italy:

• Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi
• Papal Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels

Orvieto

We took a bus tour to we are now on bus headed to Orvieto and Assisi on a tour bus. Orvieto hosed the Papacy for a number of years when the City of Rome was threatened.

Orvieto sits on a high plateau. It is a quaint, quiet village with a huge Catholic heritage. We have pictures below of the tram ride that takes you up the the village on the hill. Click here to see a little movie clip on the tram ride.

While going though the wonderful Orvieto Cathedral, Fred went over to a Franciscan Monk who was hearing confessions in a roped off are. Fred asked if he could go to confession even though he says he didn’t have any serious sins other than the little ruckus that occurred in the Vatican Museum when Fred stopped some people from cutting in line. The priest didn’t understand english but gently motioned for Fred to get his blessing. He held Fred’s head with one hand and made the sign of the cross on Fred’d forehead. It was very special. Fred felt the Holy Spirit’s energy pass into him.

You were not allowed to take pictures in the Cathedral. Orvieto Pictures:

 Assisi

We left Orvieto and headed for Lake Turismo for lunch. Our tour was first treated to a reception of wine and bruschetta which was excellent! Then, we sat down for a full lunch that was wonderful. We then headed out to Assisi.

We visited the church associated with St Claire before heading for the Basilica of St Francis. The village of Assisi sits on a hill high above a tone where the Basilica of Mary and the Angels resides. We visited the later on our way out of town.

We visited where St Francis was born and raised, where he worked and where he decided to form the Franciscans.

There was a Corpus Festival in Assisi while we were there. The streets were very crowded. At the Basilica of St Francis, there was a procession going on to move relics from the lower church to the upper church. We couldn’t visit the upper church because there were too many people trying to get in and our time ran out.

The lower church was spectacular. It’s too bad we couldn’t take pictures.

We had a plan for this day. We think the Holy Spirit may have had a different agenda.

Our plan was to have a good breakfast at Beehive Cafe where we are staying. Then, we were going to 9:00 am Mass at St Mary’s of the Angels and Martyrs within walking distance.

The first part of our plan worked out. At breakfast, we agreed that after we visited the ruins of Ostia Antica, if time permitted we would go to visit the Basilica of St Paul Outside the walls. We went back to the room.

Fred decided to call the TEP Wireless company because our european hotspot device wasn’t charging and was acting broken. Fred thought he damaged a wire connection when he changed the battery the day before. He ended up on the phone for over 50 minutes trying to arrange where they were going to send the replacement since or cruise started the next day. Fred had to gather some information for them on our itinerary. He sent them a reply to their email to him.  We had lost about two hours and we were a little frazzled. We both decided to forgo Ostia Antica.

We had lunch and headed to the train station to buy on all day metro tickets so we could visit several sites in Rome beginning with St Paul’s Outside the Walls. Fred noted that the St Pauls Cloister wasn’t open until 3 PM.

It took us 1.5 hours to buy our Metro tickets. It was a horrifying, illogical and unbelievable! We got in the long line 3 times for buying tickets from the “office”. The automated ticket selling machines that every one uses refused to even recognize our credit card. It may only have accepted debit cards.  We tried many machines, asked many people for help and got no where. We decided  to buy with Euro’s. We put in a $20, it wouldn’t take it. We went and got 2 ten’s. The machines wouldn’t accept them either. It seems they  were only accepting coins.

In the process we must have gone up and down the stairs from one level to another 4 or  times. We finally went back to the ticket office and waited and waited. Finally our number came up. We paid him euro’s 2 ten’s and we had our daily train passes. Normally, like the previous day – 2 minutes stop for tickets, now had taken 1.5 hours.

Amazingly, we arrived at St Pauls at about 5 minutes before the Cloister opened. How ironic! Thank you HS. I learned that my tempered wasn’t yet under control!

St Paul’s Outside the Walls

Cloister at St Pauls

St Peter’s in Chains

After we went to St Pauls and its cloister, it was about 4:30 pm. St Paul’s was breathtaking!! Milly normally wouldn’t have wanted to go to another church. She agreed that we could go to St Peter’s in the Chains. We got lost but eventually found it.

Last Dinner in Rome

We thought we would get a couple of Pizza’s at our favorite restaurant. We had been the variety of Pizzas they offered and thought they would be good. It was closed on Sunday!

We decided to go to a full course dinner place. We has a great 4 course dinner with half liter bottles of wine (white for milly and Red for Fred).  We had bruschetta, Spaghetti Carbonara followed by Veal and beef entries and then desert! All of this was excellent.

We take an 11:15 train to port to board the Cruise. We will be ready to board by 12:30 pm. We need a rest and a day at sea!

We got off the boat on the island of Mykonos. It was definitely a wonderful setting. Many other smaller islands were visible all around. The stark white homes on the hill sides were beautiful.

We had Mass at the only Catholic Church on the island. The local priest explained that the Greek Orthodox communities didn’t really get along with the few Catholics on these islands but expressed hope that things would improve.

We walked along the streets on the waterfront and then drove to a Greek Orthodox Monastery in the hills. The Church in the monastery was very different. The monk explained to us that their churches didn’t have statues because they were banned in reaction to the pagan statues of the existent culture when Christianity was introduced.

There were about 900 small “churches” on the island. Most of these these Greek Orthodox structures were small and privately owned. Families relocate the bones of their family members to these “churches”. Every year, families would gather and celebrate the lives lived by the family members.  On Mykonos, these structures tended to have brown and white roofs where other Greek settlements had more blue domes.

Mykonos, Greece