Mental Math Bee

Here is Zak, being all brilliant at figuring out math problems in his head.  There were many of the problems I couldn't keep up with (not too surprising, my math skills are non-exixtent), but he had the answer as soon as the question finished!  He reminds me a little of Darren, what with the non-smiling because this is SERIOUS STUFF.

And here:

Is the boy, outside the back door of the gym, because when they tell you the audience has to remain quiet, you realize that your four-year-old's idea of being quiet is to only make his car sound effects loud enough for the surrounding county to hear.  He poked his head in whenever Zak was up, and I gave thanks that it was good weather.

Zak made it to the fifth round; there were only 3 kids who beat him, out of 300 in 3rd grade at his school.  Obviously, I take credit for his brilliance.

15

Venezia

Ben's normal view of us
St Mark's Square

Courtyard of the Doge's palace

Paul Newman?

Grand Canal

Rialto Bridge

On the Rialto

Museums, Parthenon

Give it a ponder

Roman Money

The vault they keep the money in

What you can't see is the crazy homeless
guy screaming at us.  Big cities are so
much fun!

another fountain

Zak can tell you why we took this photo
inside the Parthenon

Also, this one

Outside the Parthenon

Il Collesseo

Trying to share two iPod tours didn't work out so well

The stairs to our apartment.  We were on the second
floor, which means we got to climb three flights
of stairs to get up.  

Our taxi ride from the airport into Rome took us past the Coloseum, where we saw the finish line for the Rome Marathon.  It was pretty neat to walk down the block and be able to see the ruins from there.

Palatine Hill and Forum Romanum

We successfully navigated the Metro during rush hour.
Yay, us!

Have I mentioned how beautiful and green everything was?

Who wouldn't love getting flowers from
this cutie?

Olive grove on the Palatine hill.  

At the Roman Forum, listening to the audio tour and loving
the sunshine

One marvelous thing about the Palatine hill and Roman Forum is that there are lots of trails to follow (or No to run on), beautiful gardens and cool ruins.  Even the huts where (maybe) Remus and Romulus were raised.  Did you know our word palace comes from the schmancy homes on Palatine Hill?

Città del Vaticano

Zak's favorite exhibit

I do believe I should get a retrospective 'A'
in Humanities 101 now.  

How much do you think he spends
on that uniform?  The tassels are
cute, though.  

Outside St Peter's

We're lucky the iPods have really good batteries

First thing Monday morning Ben picked up our Roma passes to allow us to use all the public transportation in Rome.  We squished ourselves on the express bus to the Vatican city and managed not to lose anyone or any wallets on our little trip, despite Ben getting felt up a couple times.

It was a mistake to go to the Vatican City museum on a Monday.  Since so many other sites were closed, the line to get in was loooooong.  From the moment you get in line there are people trying to sell you a tour--so you get to skip the line (so temping. . . .too bad we couldn't afford what they were asking).  I don't know how many times I kicked myself for not remembering to reserve our tickets online, but it was a lot and I had plenty of time to feel stupid for not doing it.  It also seems strange that the Vatican is located in its own country, but not as weird as the uniforms are for the swiss guards who man the borders.  Once we had wended our way through the horrendous line the guards at the x-ray machines let us and our 'bambino' go to the head of the security line.  And, then the ticket guy told us Isaac didn't need to pay, yay for Italians loving big families!  We shuffled our way to the cafeteria, around all the exhibits (to which the kids were in large part completely indifferent) and then into the Sistine Chapel.  We listened to our downloaded Rick Steve's tour and followed his advice to get from the Sistine chapel into St Paul's without waiting another few hours in the security line there, so at least we did that one part of our day exactly right!