Lots of St Marias!

We're wrapping up Rome.

Today we finished scouting the Angels and Demon's sites, now all that is left to do is write the adaptation to get the movie made.

If anyone is getting Tina's updates too you might not have gotten one yesterday. Somehow she managed to get Gmail to eat it when she was saving a draft, so she's typing fast and furious today- probably trying to do her "makeup homework". I haven't actually seen anything she's sent, and she hasn't seen mine. We'll have to trade notes when we get back and see if we were actually on the same vacation!

Today's big sites were St Maria Del Popolo, home of the Chigi Chapel and St Maria Della Vitoria, home of the Ecstasy of St. Theresa. We had tried to visit the latter yesterday but were denied, it was Sunday and Mass was in progress. Some poor communication with the priest guarding the entrance (keeping the tourists at bay) yielded much confusion and the number 3. Whether that meant the masses would be done at 3 or there were to be three masses I'm not sure, so we proceed on our way. Today's visit found the door unguarded and tourists welcome.

A short combo of walk and subway ride later we found our way to St Maria Del Popolo, home of the Chigi Chapel. A fun little church but a bit heavy on the whole death angle. Up until 1870ish Popes allowed burials in and under churches and St Maria Del Popolo was heavily used for this function. Each little side chapel included at least one tomb and a manhole sized cover in the floor. These man holes lead down to graves where family members were buried. The process included digging a little niche and tossing the body in. Apparently it got a bit stinky after a while.

I commented to Tina that this church probably wasn't popular with weddings. Embedded in the floor right after crossing the threshold at the back of the church was a brass scull and cross bones. What a way to start your wedding. "Right this way ma'am, mind your step".We also made a side trip to the Cappucin Crypt (more death). Decorated with the bones and skulls of 4,000 friars arranged into patterns, the Cappucin Crypt lives up to its slogan, "We you are we once were, what we are you will become".

We also had some gellato (lemon and rasberry is my favorite combination) from a couple different spots. To say there are several places to buy gellato would be an understatement. It would be more appropriate to say you can't swing a stray cat without hitting a scooter causing the driver to swerve in front of a smart car and forcing it to crash into a gellato store.