Well, I can tell you one thing for sure - we won't be heading anywhere near or towards St. Peter's square. Today at noon, every Sunday, The Pope comes out to wave to and to bless the hoards of people that gather in the square.
G went off to visit the catacombs with an optional excursion. I don't have a desire to visit any catacombs again so I stayed back and enjoyed a more calm day.
First I did a little laundry and then I headed to the pool to swim awhile, do laps and some exercise movements and then onto the lawn chair to read on my e-reader. As I was reading, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and when I looked, I scared a little green lawn lizard. A little while later, forgetting about putting my feet off the chair and onto the wooden floor, another little green lizard ran across my foot and sandal.
The chairs were put onto wooden platforms to help save the grass and it was under the platforms where the lizards hung out in the shade. Every now and then, about every 4 minutes, another lizard would pop up to search for food - or me, I haven't decided yet. It was very satisfying for me to watch as the lizard would pick up his foot if it was on a piece of wood that was in the sunny part which was too hot for him. Then he would put it down and pick up the other foot that was in the sun. When I tapped on my chair to make a noise, he would move a bit further on and continue protecting his feet by alternating which foot was down. It was as if I had my own private zoo.
G had a good day under ground which wormed its way for about 17km and held about 170 thousand bodies in four layers of catacombs. Each layer is 3 meters lower than the one above it. Only Christians were buried in there and in order to help the average Christian get in, all Christians who were of means had to pay huge sums to be included.
The large parkland belonged to a woman in the year 200 AD and who got exiled because she became a Christian. When she left, she deeded the land over to the Christians. In those days you could not convert to Christianity and pray and support anyone other than the State Ruler. Later, the land was used as the Catacombs and today it is a huge green space in Rome because if anything were built upon this space, it could fall through into the catacombes.
A similar story explains why none of Rome, especially the older parts, contains any newer, tall buildings because if they dug up a historical site, all work would be stopped and then developed in a different way. So by not having to pound anything into the earth or to support shorter buildings, they sidestep the process of finding anything there. It is said that there is much more below the Earth that hasn't been found yet.
There are few pics today from G's tour because one isn't allowed to take any of the Catacombes or of St. Paul's. But there is a pic of Julius Caesar's castle - in ruins of course - which has a very popular tree which you can see all over the city. I call it the giraffe tree (because it looks just as the trees do in Africa where the giraffes strip the tree to resemble an umbrella, but G calls it a lollipop tree.) Go figure - ( and now you know why I do all the writing).
After my history lesson, and believe me this is the best way to give me history lessons - a shorter condensed version so that I don't have to stand around and listen to too much and get all fidgety cause I have to listen for too long- G and I had a nap, planned for our tomorrow departure to the island of Capri and had some necessary down time.