Pachelbel

It's been a rough week...on Monday morning, Pachelbel died unexpectedly in her sleep. Due to the unexpected nature of her death we had a post-mortem performed, and it appears she died of a pulmonary embolism, which we believe was quick and painless. Took us completly by surprise, there were no warning signs, and nothing that could have been done. She was a really special girl.

The Brittish Open

Sorry for the poor quality pics...my phone isn't quite up for the challenge of misty Scottish weather. Am working in St. Andrews today, and getting to drop in on a little of the Open. It is such a big deal, thousands of people are flooding in. The pics were taken first thing in the morning, before everyone arrived for the main event. Bit crazy, but it is nice to be here for it (at least for one day! no more than that!)

Rome Zoo

Marc and I made it out to the Rome Zoo, which was lovely. Note, the first photo is not real, it was an ad at the park, we did not get to see the pope play with parrots. But some cool things were the CSI exhibit highlighting wildlife crime (first thing you see at the zoo, pretty cool!), the fun enrichment for the lemurs, and we managed to catch a seal training session (really good though I personally wouldn't be using my hand or face as a target for a seal the way they did). The biggest thing we didn't like was the Japanese snow macaques, the weather is far to hot for them (according to the zoo's sign they live naturally in temps from -13 to 25 C, the day we were there it was around 37). They had a weird skin condition, not sure what from (over grooming, mites, maybe fungus from sweating? we don't know), and I can only guess that they were being kept in to hot of conditions. The exhibit was otherwise amazing, but why have an animal being kept in such hot conditions if it is not appropriate for them?

Vatican Museum

Next up was the vatican museum. It was packed (as you can see from the map room)! So Marc and I only ran through the highlights. I particularly enjoyed the embellishments on the maps, and their routes in mythology. I also loved the celestial globes.

St Peter's Basilica

Next stop we visited St. Peter's Basilica. So beautiful, going first thing in the morning was perfect not only to avoid crowds, but the lighting through the windows was spectacular!

Roma

Just some pictures from our wanderings around Rome. The last two show Felicia before her large beer (didn't understand that large was 1 Litre) and after :)

Catacombs & Appian Way

Next up we visited the catacombs and Appian way. The catacombs were massive; we visited a very small fraction of them, it is so impressive how complex they were. The carvings marking the graves were beautiful, particularly the mausoleums. We then walked part of Appian way, until we reached the original Roman road. It is amazing thinking of how they constructed the road, I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to carry the stones in.

Herculaneum

First stop when I joined Marc, Felicia and Daniel in Italy was Herculaneum. Similar to Pompeii, Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed when Vesuvius errupted. It is astounding how advanced they were; amazing architecture, the frescos grogeous, and love the mosiacs. Really liked the wine advertisement outside of one of the shops showing what wines they had on offer!

Falkirk Wheel

Daniel and Felicia came for a quick visit in the UK before travelling in Europe. We took them to several castles we had already visited, but we also made it out to the Falkirk wheel, which I hadn't previously seen. When developing the canals, someone made a bit of an error, and the two ends didn't meet (they were something like 30 m difference in height?). So they developed this fancy wheel, which boats drive into, and then it tilts and takes them up or down. Turns out to have been a brillant mistake; it is a very popular tourist attraction, they must make a killing from it!