This is our team. we were all very excited then. After all, for most of us, it was the first time to step on a strange country.

Note that the bus was just temporarily, we haven't met our 'formal' driver & bus yet. i will make further explanation later.

Rome airport

I found a 'smart' on the street. at first we were so curious about this cute car, but in the later days we found out 'smart' are so common in Europe, u can see it everywhere.

Rome is the capital of Italy, to be honest, it's not that clean like what i had imagined, i found a lot of 'dog-end' on the road. Our tour guide told us Italy is the dirtiest place in Europe. He's right, we found other countries r very clean later on.

Back to the positive, Rome is a city with deep culture and tradition, there's no other city in Europe have such a rich history like Rome does. Walking in this city, u can hardly find any building that have been built less 100 years. We have a short discussion on this, if our ancestors have such high architectural skill, we needn't to spend so much strengh to build our country. Italy gave me two impressions: 1. Great architectures. 2. Great sculptures. There aren't any civilization in the world can match.


[ 此贴被Challenger17在2004-12-31 16:12重新编辑 ]

Rome amphitheater, symbol of Rome, one of "the world's eight wonders".

罗马斗兽场, 罗马的象征，世界八大奇迹之一


[ 此贴被Challenger17在2004-12-31 15:58重新编辑 ]

Roman evolvement, the four stone-board shows the once great ancient Rome Empire.

罗马的演变, 四块石板显示出古罗马帝国的强盛.

马拉蒂诺丘遗址

位于罗马城中的马拉蒂诺丘，相传是罗马人最早定居和最早建城的地方．从遗址上可以看出，此处是公元前１世纪罗马皇帝兴建的皇宫．皇帝的私人住宅，体育场，庙宇等遗迹．

The xxxx(not that xxxx, it's 'female wolf').

In roman myth, the romans was first fed by a xxxx.

Fontana di Trevi(许愿池, Italian, i don't know how to say this in English)

It become world-famous with the help of a movie 'Roman Holiday'. They say if u drop 3 coins into the pool, ur wish will come true. All of us did drop 3 coins, we hope we could return to Rome someday

BMW Z4

i'm a boy of course i care about autos

At noon, we temporarily left italy --- we entered another country, the smallest country in the world, Vatican!

This country is only 0.44 square kilometers in size, 544 population, but it's the center of Christianism.

In the pic is the San Peter Square. When i took this pic, i stood at near one side of Vatican's 'national boundaries'. And now, u can see the other side of the 'national boundaries', through those columns ahead. u can imagine how small the country is.

San Peter Square was built in 1667. The central huge column showed in the last picture was brought from Egypt in 40 DC. The square was surranded by 284 round columns, above which are the 140 sculptures.

Vatican's army is a tradition. it's army is formed by 200 Swiss, their's suit have even change a bit for 500 years! It's also said that this suit was designed by Michelangelo(米开朗琪罗).

In the middle of San Peter Square, is the famous San Peter Church. The biggest Church in the world. Building this church took 120 years, finished in 1506. Many priceless art treasure was collected here. Like Michelangelo's sculptures & Raphael's paintings.

Inside San Peter Church. Sorry my camera perform very poor in low-light conditions.