*clears throat* This may be a mission: the photo count so far is more than 8500. Luckily, 4000 of those are on a moody SD card which refuses to connect, so you're saved at least half of the agony. ^^
We begin!
Will skip all the photos of driving to Christchurch - they were mostly to combat homesickness anyway. :) Also missing photos of flying, airports, fancy Korean hotel... So the first should be:
European flags lining the road from Fiumucino Airport. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the bright orange Citroen Jumpy that Dad and I were in. That shall have to come later. :)
The house at Falcognana, outside Rome. Our apartment was in the lower half, and was missing a few luxuries: watchable television (sound only isn't much good if you don't speak Italian), a solid roof and toilets that work properly. Oh, and there were bats in the wall. ^^ And flies!
Dad on the way to the bus stop. We were about 1 - 2 hours from the city centre by public transport, and probably weeks if we tried to drive. Cars go down this road (impossibly empty only because it was six in the morning) so fast that in a cartoon they would leave smoke puffs behind them. If you don't walk in the prickles, you get squished.
One rickety ride later: central Rome, and the top of the Church of San Giovanni. We got off the bus in the square and I remember staring round in amazement - in one scene you could see this gorgeous (and huge) building, Italian designer stores and a stretch of the original Roman city wall. How much more perfect can you get? :D Okay, maybe if there was a library...
Dad checks out the market just down the road. This place was immense, and incredibly cheap: they had rows of Gucci bags, Louis Vuitton hanging from red plastic coathangers, piles of clothes for 2, 3, 4€... Totally legitimate, no?
Roman wall! With additional gate by someone more recent: I'll have to check my facts, but I think maybe only one and a half thousand years ago. Boring, boring. :P There are about twenty more pictures of this small section, but for the sake of sanity you get just one.
San Giovanni once more. After wandering a bit and eating my first cornetto (the Italian version of a criossant, and delicious), we headed over to look more closely. This is an amazing place. Stupidly I didn't get a photo of the square itself, but the church dominates it from the end of a long grass lawn - there are benches all along the wide path to the doors, and to the right you can see an even more ancient building that looked to be a fountain or a temple, just buried in the shrubbery. That happens here, you know. Sites that would be protected with miles of velvet rope and armed guards anywhere else just fade into the background. Not even a sign. *shakes head in amazement*
From the top of the steps. Scale needed!
This is the entrance hall, just behind the colonnade. The entrance hall, the bit you walk past to get to the real attraction. Craziness! To give an idea of the size, the large door at the end is at least three times taller than me.
Inside. How can you take enough pictures of this place? :D
Scale, finally! :) See how hard it is to find the words to describe this? I apologise for the blurriness too - low light and bad photography. :P
And the exit hall! :)
Wandering the streets of Rome... No wonder all the guidebooks say this city is a walker's paradise. There was beauty everywhere.
So you turn the corner, and then: Colosseum! *incredulous grin* I think I must have stood staring for a couple of minutes at least. Dad found it very amusing.
Actual Colosseum!!! :D Classics geek is very happy.
Arch of Constantine, in the same square. I have a panorama that gets them both in, and will post that as soon as I learn how to operate the software. It was about 10 in the morning by this time, and the line to get inside the arena stretched for hundreds of metres. Too long for us!
Surreptitious photo of gladiators (to save 50€). These guys parade around outside, supposedly looking handsome and Roman, waving their big plastic swords. They definitely have a sense of humour: "Come have sexy photo with Roman man!" in seven different languages. ^^
Detail of Constantine's Arch. Just imagine the carvers working on this, two thousand years ago... Like everyone says, Rome is a magical place.
Statue of Caesar, one of many that stood on each side of the road from the Colosseum to the Victor Emmanuel Monument, beside the old Roman Forum.
Tadaa! Very impressive, gigantic marble building commemorating the first king of a united Italy. Wikipedia has just informed me that it holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which we didn't see - but this day was unbelievable enough, I think.
The ancient forum, with the Arch of Titus. It was surreal to be just metres away from something with so much history. Julius Caesar died here. This was the heart of Rome - ah, it's almost impossible to believe that all that actually happened. Another world...
The front of the Senators' Palace in the Piazza del Campidoglio, on the top of the Capitoline Hill. (Another moment of disbelief.) Wow. Scale again: the base of the statue would come to around about my waist.
Italy! Scooters everywhere, and I mean everywhere.
The Forum, with columns from the Temple of Concord and a relatively modern (but still ancient) church in the background.
Dad in Rome!
A replica of the original statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline. In this square Dad and I ran straight into the middle of a wedding: those poor people will have tourists' heads in their wedding photos! :) It was a beautiful day, blue and warm, as it always seems to be.
Very impressive patriotic-style photo of the 'Altar of the Fatherland', the Victor Emmanuel Monument. Or at least I think so. :P Standing in front of this building is like standing three feet from a lion: it exudes pride and power. Maybe a bit of careless brutality, as well.
Just to change moods on you: Piazza Navona! What I really wanted to photograph, but couldn't, were the artists that filled the square. They display their work on large, thick white cardboard
placards, and everything is for sale. They're damn good. :) Watercolours, oils and acrylics, caricatures, pencil portraits and landscapes, everything is here. I wish I could have brought one back! Also in the square, just as we entered, were a group of young men selling bubble-blowing machines. They appeared all over the city, which meant that everywhere you went there were bubbles to pop.
The Fontana del Nettuno, toward the end of the Piazza. The Fountain of the Four Rivers was covered in scaffolding when we went, but there was such an atmosphere to this place.
Pantheon! Now, for 'wow' moments it's hard to beat this.
Just had to catch the gladiator on his cellphone. :)
Fountain in the Piazza Rotunda, in front of the Pantheon. Travellers ringed this when we arrived, sitting dazed on the steps: by now it was around two or three in the afternoon, and the pizzerias were doing very good business. Rome is hot.
[Deep breath. Have been playing with photos for... four hours. Lucky it's a rainy English day outside.]
The interior of the Pantheon. There's a sign near the door that calls for quiet and reverence, but the dome overhead means that there's a constant buzz of talk. There are different marbles everywhere you look, and it's all done with amazing precision. The tomb of Victor Emmanuel is inside as well, unfortunately impossible to photograph because it's softly lit - but it's a mass of black marble and silver, covered with flowers and guarded by volunteers from the monarchist movement in full dress uniform.
Looking up in the entranceway. Dad liked this one. :)
The pizzeria where we bought lunch: one potato and onion pizza and one blue cheese. Guess which was the nicer. :P
Dad in Italy! There are a handful of these, but this one's the best.
The Trevi Fountain. I had no idea it was so big! There were ice-cream shops all along the walls around us and crowds of people either queuing or lounging on the steps, but I managed to get close enough to toss a coin in. Yay. ^^
Detail of the fountain... Ah, it's just gorgeous.
Somebody's column! At one stage, we knew who that somebody was. No longer.
This is what malls look like when you're in Rome. :P
A copy of a painting (which I've just realised I saw in the Vatican Museum :) done in chalks on the sidewalk. This was just after walking down Rome's most important shopping street, the Via del Corso, which was filled with snazzily dressed Italians and expensive stores.
Big impressive statues somewhere in the vicinity of the Spanish Steps.
The Piazza di Spagna, maybe. *sheepish look*
This was just perfect: one ancient building, flanked by another even more ancient building. On the street, with very little explanation and no special treatment, just something people wander past. In New Zealand, something a fraction as old as this would be considered a national treasure - here, it's part of the city. Amazing.
The Piazza Liberta and a huge circle of buildings in which there is a very fancy hotel and, at one end, a McDonalds.
This is a roundabout. Really. :P
The outer entrance at Termini, one of Rome's 'main transport hubs' (in the words of my guidebook). They make you pay for the toilets! They also have very pricey orange juice. 
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