Italian Nights

We arrived in Florence (Firenze in Italian!) this afternoon via train - another great day and another beautiful city. Each day we spend most of our time wandering/walking through the streets and looking at really, really big, beautiful churches and ancient buildings. There's is so much to see that I don't know what to write about in this blog - besides all of the spectacular sights, ther is the food, people, transportation, and on and on!
On Saturday evening we walked down to Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and Piazza Navona. The piazza was a really busy place - there were lots of vendors, street mimes and actors, musicians and some kind of Ballroom Dancing exhibition. On the way home we had some wonderful gelati and met a couple of young priests from the States at the gelati stand - they are both here working on the doctorate degrees. These wonderful buildings become even more spectacular with the night lighting. We took lots of pictures - some turned out better than others, but we haven't had time to sort through, straighten and make corrections. We became adept at using the bus/subway system in Rome - really very easy and certainly preferable to driving on these crazy streets!!
Sunday morning we went to the Vatican and attended the Latin High Mass at the Basillica of St. Peter's - a truly beautiful and amazing experience. From there we went to the Baths of Caracalla -- the ruins of the ancient Roman bath house. Gotta tell you, Lifetime has nothing on them!!! They could handle 1600 people at a time in pools (hot, cold and warm pools in succession) in addition to cafes, libraries, exercise rooms and sunbathing platforms. The floors were covered with mosaic tiles in geometric designs as well as a variety of pictures.
In the evening we went back to the Colosseum and St. Peter's to see them in the night lighting, before another dinner at an interesting little sidewalk cafe.
It's getting late - after midnight here - and everyone else is asleep, so I'm going to try to get this posted and get to sleep - tomorrow will be another big day - Ciao!