Days .... not sure

This is the very friendly cat who's adopted us- this is her kitten (I do wonder what happened to the rest of them :( ):
This is the beach at Catania, the largest town nearest us. The water isn't as clear here as it is at others:

 The day after Tori and Erin got here we visited a series of seaside towns near us. Here you can see an old church, we walked down on the shore a bit after this:

 View on the other side of the cliff above:

 Lunch, I got very tired of paninis on our trip:

 The day after that, Sunday, we visited Taormina, a small town on the coast with picturesque ruins and rocks that is apparently 'the' reason you visit Sicily, and it was only an hour and a half away with traffic:

 This is to the right of the above picture, you can see mount Etna, where we live:

 Then on Monday we took a plane to Pisa, here you can see the (round building) baptistry, then the cathedral, and, of course, the leaning tower, which they still let people climb (I was surprised):

 Yesss:

 From Pisa, same day, we took a train to Florence, here is the sunset:

 I don't have a lot of pictures of Florence actually, left that to Tori. Here you can see Brunelleschi's very famous dome on the cathedral of San Lorenzo to the left:

 Cathedral at night, the cathedral itself is pretty old, but the facade, that nice marble outside, is much newer:

 And on Wednesday we took a different train to Rome, here is the Colosseum:

 Inside it they had bits of sculpture they'd excavated and things they'd found, old nuts and glasses and bones and graffiti:

 Here you can see the arch of Constantine, celebrating his making Christianity a big deal (until he stopped being emperor) and the Colosseum on  the right:

 Now we're on Palatine Hill just beyond the arch, where the rich and aristocratic used to live, now just hulking bits of building:

 Here you can see a bit of the Roman Forum, right next to Palatine Hill. Those three arches are the right third of the old Basilica of Constantine:

 From there we walked to the Trevi fountain:

After which we visited the Pantheon:

 Walking through the city:

 The Romans looted Egypt, too, like Napoleon much later, here's one of their obelisks, we saw maybe three more in different parts of the city:

 The next day we took a guide-led bike ride on the Appian Way (after visiting the National Museum of Rome), the ancient, still-used primary road into Rome. Nice contrast in this one, I think the guide said the exact purpose of this arch was unknown, it wasn't a gate into the city:

 In ancient Rome you couldn't be buried in city limits, so there were a lot of ruins of tombs that we saw:

 Aqueduct with golf course in foreground:

 We stopped here for sheep cheese and wine and bread. Part of the building was very old (on the right, you can only see a bit) and falling apart and propped up and unlivable that was I think in the process of being preserved, there was some project going on I couldn't translate from the signs. The other, newer side, on the left, was inhabited by the family that kept the sheep and I think a farm, very neat, but I think you could tell from past photos how much the old and the new all coexist in Rome:

 The next day we went to the Vatican, I was pretty excited to see the (most) original Laocoon:

 Here you can see some of the inside of the Vatican Museum, though different areas looked vastly different:

 Tori and Erin in front of the Vatican:

 Tourista-ness:

Tori took good photos of the inside of St. Peters, which was huge huge huge, and also had multiple dead people on display, their faces didn't look real, it was creepy, creepy Catholicism .... http://ivarfjeld.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/dead-pope-kept-in-open-air-after-earthquake/ It's not respectful of me, but it was very striking, I have to say ....

Days 5-6, Sunday & Monday 1-2 July

Not many pictures, so not that much fun, sorry- we went to a beach called Fontane Bianche on Sunday that was pretty crowded, but nice, and this evening went to the square of our neighbourhood/town to watch the festival of Saint Antonio, I want to say it was, can't believe I forgot already. One weird thing about Italy is the Italians themselves, they are a pretty homogeneous group, tan skin, dark hair, dark eyes, and I'm taller than like half the men. From what I saw tonight at the festival, they seem to dress mostly like Americans, except, as mere pointed out to me, there's a weird trend for the men to flip their collars up. At the beach it was pretty different from the states, and my board shorts covered more than most of the guys' bathing suits did, and almost all of the women except some grandmothers wore bikinis (this seemed to upset Bill, but you know). The populace is consistently pretty thin, not always fit, but again homogeneous, and I guess stereotypes exist for a reason.

The festival was decidedly un-American, and I didn't see anyone who stuck out as foreign as us, which is fine; we think it's a festival purposed to blessing cars, and at 7.30ish the church bells rang and a band in the square started playing and a large wooden effigy of the saint came out of the church and hung out in front of it while a choir sang a few songs. There were two people on it but I'm not Catholic at all, and oh, I don't speak Italian, sooo I'm not sure what was going on but it was interesting. After the music, kids pulled on ropes on the front of the cart (but you could barely see the wheels, it was all in wood and decorated) and adults pushed behind and it started to go through the streets and we walked back to the house. There were some fireworks, not a lot a lot, they must have depleted them over the past four days of firing them off ....