more stuff on the first day that I forgot because of jet lag

 John kept us at a pretty fast clip, I had to admonish him that the rest of us have assignments for classes like finding architectural details to take pictures of and that is hard at a huge run.  He hasn’t quite gotten on to European relaxed walking clip.  I’m usually the one that has to force myself to slow down, but John is in teacher mode.  And he has ducklings, no matter where he goes, everyone follows him.  If he ducks into a tobacco shop to look at cigars, they 

come in with him.  We all lined up for a picture of the class at the Trevi, but he was in his own little world and didn’t pay attention to us for several long minutes.  I told the rest of the class that he is a philosopher and we were subject to any kind of mugging, horrible happening without him ever being aware of it.  One student suggested hiding, so that when he finally did look up for his class, he wouldn’t be able to find us, which at the Trevi Fountain is pretty easy to do.  As far as we know, no one has gotten mugged, accepted roses they 

 didn’t want, been accosted by the new people with parakeets that they’re trying to give you, so we’re doing good, but today we go to the Vatican and that could be really busy because of this new Pope that everyone seems to like.  Some things I forgot to talk about.  We arrived so early in Rome that our hotel was not ready, so we left our bags, made for the nearest eatery (where we were falling asleep in our meals) and then went to the church right by our hotel, Santa Maria 

 Maggore.  As you can see from the pictures, it has a large stone pope praying to the altar which includes a reliquary of silver that contains a few pieces of wood from the cradle in which Jesus laid.  We also got in the Spanish Steps that night, but I really don’t see the purpose of this, there is a good view, the steps are a good place to sit, but other than that, I can’t see what all the fuss is about.  I guess if you could see the steps than their beauty would be more apparent?????

We also visited Marcus Aurelius' column pictured here and I was finally able to find the fountain by Bernini that was the scallop shell with the Barberini bees in it.  I looked for this fountain before in Rome and couldn't find it, it helps if you are in the right piazza to start with.  Shockingly, the bees for the Barberini are actually in the Piazza Barberini by the Barberini Palazzo.