Pantheon as the day from hell continues...

 I have to say that the place that we have visited so far that I have visited before, but it still awed me was the Pantheon.  This is the best preserved ancient building in the heart of Rome with a dome that was the model for all of our modern engineering feats.  Without this building, Brunelleschi wouldn’t have figured out how to put a dome on Florence’s cathedral.  The pictures from this place that we took the last time, don’t capture how big the oculus in the 

 middle of the ceiling is, so it amazes again.  We tried many different techniques to capture it on the camera, but again, something that pictures don’t do justice to.  We hit a white pizza place for lunch and I had a great pizza, and strawberry tiramisu that was heaven.  We hit a couple of my favorite churches in Rome and then got back to the hotel where John and Rachel spent an hour or more getting the credit card worked out 

 so that they could buy the things that they needed to buy in Italy for the foreign study.  I can’t believe that they kept their calm as well as they did.  But then they went to Termini train station to get the train tickets to Pompeii and the Rome passes to make sure it did work and lost it there.  The Rome pass was closed and they couldn’t get those, but they had to take a number to be waited on for the train tickets and they were 200

 away from being served.  So, they spent hours in the train station getting our tickets to Pompeii, but it was worth it in some ways because the tickets were incredibly cheap compared to what we could find online and what RailEurope quoted us.  So, word to the wise, get your regional train tickets on the ground when you get to the country because they are far cheaper.  John and I went with a couple of students who had found a particular restaurant in the guide book

they wanted to try and it was good food, but I ate next to a dog.  Yes, that’s right, this man was able to bring his dog into the restaurant with him and feed him from the table right next to other diners.  At home, this would be some kind of health violation I’m sure, but I bet that Jerry Taylor (Lucy the therapy dog’s dad) wishes he lived in Europe now.   Just as an aside:  the picture below this Caravaggio and the dark dome in the middle of the post are both from the church of St. Ignatius that is made up of trompe l'oeil paintings.  This picture if a barrel vault that goes up and up because of the painting and the dome in the middle is painted on a flat ceiling.  If you stand in the right place in the church, it's a perfect dome, but as you move up, you see that the light source is on the far side and doesn't move with you.  It's amazing...