We just attended Mass in a church that is 1000 years old. Wow. It was my first time for mass in Italian. My favorite part was the prayers of the faithful which started "Senore Jesu"... which means something like "Lord Jesus", but to my ears that hear a lot of Spanish it was just repeating "Mr. Jesus" each time. We are packing up and getting ready to move to our first bike tour hotel. We haven't biked in 4 days, but we have done a lot of walking and stair climbing. I'm sure we will be fine. I never posted this picture of us eating lunch in Venice. It is from Friday after the Doge's Palace tour. Gondola going by in the canal that we are admiring from our table. To us desert people this is very different. Here is another of us drinking a spritz until it is time for our sunset gondola ride (Saturday).
The ride today was beautiful. Everywhere you looked it was all countryside and distant views. I don't think we can do justice in a photo. We walked to the Leonardo museum and then to his house. The house was kind of what you'd guess, the building remains, but nothing else. Still, We walked right where young Leonardo di Vinci walked. We walked back to the hotel to go on another "bonus" ride. We started out but it started raining and we decided we'd already biked enough. Dinner was great. They just kept bringing out more amazing food, including ravioli with boar meat. Then the group gave us a 25th anniversary gift... Michele had asked everyone to sign a card celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary (when Greg told me we were going to finally make the trip to Italy happen). They gave it to us with dessert, and our own personal candles.
We just went to Mass in St. Peter's Basillica. It was incredible to celebrate in such an amazing setting with one of the most famous and beautiful alter decorations behind the priests. I counted 37 ordinary ministers. 7 were bishops, 1 was a cardinal, wow! Then we moved into St. Peter's square for the Papal Audience at 12. He came out and gave a brief homily about today's gospel. Then led some prayers of the faithful style prayers. We downloaded the Vatican App so we could hear a live translation into English. See the open window behind us? That is the pope! We have tickets to the Borghese Gallery this afternoon. Until then we have a nice relaxing stretch to eat and relax and maybe walk a little.
So fun reading about your trip!
ReplyDeleteLove to see more pics.