Europe Day 17: Ruins and a Pillow Fight

This morning I participated in the most moving Palm Sunday service I have ever experienced.  My voice called out with the rest of the congregation, demanding Jesus be crucified.  I nearly cried. 

A bishop with a British-English accent ran the service.  That particular parish had three congregations-African, English speaking, and Spanish speaking.  For the Palm Sunday service all three came together to present this holy experience.

After church, Kayla, Josh, and I wandered around for a place to eat.  It took a while to find a place, but we discovered a pizza place that sold pizza by "l'etto"-which is one hundreth of a kilogram.  It was really inexpensive, but much better than expected and very filling!  We were all pleasently suprised!

A little more wandering brought us to the Colosseum.  Oddly enough, it was not nearly as large or grand as I had anticipated.  Even so, it is an impressive structure!  To think it was built so very long ago, without the modern machines we have now-it blows my mind. 

With our Palm Sunday Olive Branches as weapons we pretended to be gladiators and took many pictures.  I felt a little sacrilegious, but it was only for a few minutes, and I don't know that there are actually any rules against such actions. 

After making a completely circuit around the colosseum, we declared the monument "visisted" and left for the Palatine.  This, the best we could tell, was once the home to Ceasar Augustus, and possible others with the same title.  Now it is merely a collection of ruins and a beautiful garden.  It was so much fun!  You may recall how I previously wanted to forgo all safety signs and walk along the ruins.  Well, at the Palatine I could do just that, without breaking any rules!  We took pictures pretending to be statues on shelves on the wall, sat on a fallen column, and wandered through the home of Livi.  I'm afraid I have no idea who she was, but she had an impressive house!  This was exactly the experience I had hoped for everytime I imagined going to Rome.  It almost makes me want to be an archaeologist, so I can do stuff like that all the time! Then I remember how much I enjoy writing, and showers. Neither of which I would expect to do very often while on a dig.

We meandered around the Palatine for several hours, but hungry stomachs and tired feet forced us to leave.  We struck off towards the river, past what we think was a reenactment of something or other and a temple to who-knows-who.  Out of nowhere, some dude walking down the sidewalk hits Kayla in the head with a pillow! We were all taken aback, but carried on nonetheless.  Little did we realize then that a massive pillow fight was taking place just around the corner!  We spotted the excitement and rushed to join in.  Kayla and Josh picked up pillows off the ground, gleefully joining the melee.  I could not find one for myself, so I just took pictures.  It was crazy!  Limbs were flailing, fluffy stuffing and feathers floated through the air and scurried across the ground in the breeze.  Kayla offered her pillow to me to use, but it was pretty small and I am an intense pillow warrior, so I chose to stand out. But, if ever possible, I intend to organize such an event some place in Seattle where I can pummel strangers with gentle smacks to my heart's delight.

At long last we left the pillows to walk along the river. The sun was sinking in the sky, hitting the water, bridge, and buildings at just the right angle to make the scene magical.  Kayla and I gasped and giggled for several minutes, soaking up the glorious scene we had manged to stumble upon.

Surprisingly, the river is excellent for fishing and we walked past many people who were doing just that.  They were a variety of ages, which I did not expect, and they all seemed just as pleased to enjoy the lovely day as we were.

We finished our adventure with dinner at the Chinese place, again.  What can I say?  It is just so delicious!  We did stop in a Mexican Art Museum and Kayla, using her Spanish language skills, managed to find the location of two mexican restaurants in the city.  The are both near the Vatican and, since we are going there tomorrow, we'll probably be eating lunch at one of them.  I figure so long as I eat one traditional Italian meal a day, I'm doing pretty good.