Rome, Italy

Dear Friends and Family,

This Christmas, the Onstott family took a break from our busy lives by staying in Provence. This gave the kids (and the adults) a chance to relax and play with their Christmas toys without having to worry about packing up the car or having to look for a place to get our next meal. Elyse spent some quality time playing with her new American Girl doll and doll clothes while the boys built lego Star Wars machines and battled each other on their DS consoles. Joe and Julie were able to attend Christmas parties of some American friends here in the area.

Walking the wall of Lucca

For the second week of our vacation, however, we decided that we had rested enough and were ready to take a short trip to Rome and Pompeii. Along the way, we stopped at our favorite small Italian city of Lucca in the Tuscany region of Italy. This city is unique because of the large mideaval wall that surrounds the old town and the fact that it is off the tourist path.

Gate into Old Town Lucca

The city contains numerous narrow streets that, unlike many midieval cities we've visited, are strait and well planned. The fortress wall is used today by the locals for strolling or jogging. Though we didn't manage to walk the wall around the entire circumfrance of the city, we did enter through Elyse's gate (Elisa in Italian)!  

Roman Colosseum

We then drove another three to four hours south to Rome. By the time we arrived, it was starting to getting to get late and many of the historic sites were starting to close before sunset. Nevertheless, we were able to walk around the grounds of the Colosseum, see the remains of the forum and other ancient Roman buildings, and walk up the main street to take a tour one of the many museums. It's possible that this was the area where Paul the Apostle spent time on one of his visits to Rome before his martyrdom.

Towards the Forum

View from Palantine Hill

Romulus and Remus, Legendary Founders of Rome

Though the old area of Rome is extremely beautiful, it is very busy and finding our way from place to place was no simple task. Romans, as we discovered, disregard all normal traffic rules, such as yielding to ongoing traffic or staying in traffic lanes. There are also far too few traffic lights in the city. These problems and the fact that our hotel was in the same district as many of the embassies where there have been recent bombings made it easier for us to leave without trying to see everything. Hopefully, we'll still get a chance to visit those things we missed on our next trip.

Arch of Constantine (315 AD) from Palatine Hill

Ciao Ciao!

Joe, Julie, Nicolas, Elyse, and Nathaniel