St. Peter's Basilica at night, on my way home to Bernardi. That's the last photo for now folks, hope you liked this round! God bless everyone!

Sung Latin Vespers - one of the most spiritually moving services I have been to. At the point of the Magnificat, the presiders and servers exited to go incense the tomb of St. Peter.

A kind of dark shot of the high papal altar, with the altar of the chair behind it. I purposely made it a little dark so that you could see the candles lit up everywhere around the confessio of St. Peter's tomb under the high altar.

Ok, back to serious stuff... obviously (or maybe not obviously) this is the inside of the magnificent Basilica of St. Peter. I went there for sung Latin Vespers and Mass on Tuesday (All Saints' Day). The Basilica looked very beautiful that night, with all the candles lit on every altar with a saint's tomb.

And when people were too smart to fall for being trapped in it (Thanos), well we just grabbed some web and got them anyway!

Speaking of Johnathan Venner, he was spending the evening caught up in the spiderweb that his parents sent over in their "care package!" (we gleefully spread it all over the main foyer space for people to get trapped in it!)

It's not every day you see this. Not even every Halloween. Yes, you guessed right, it's an "ancient skeleton dressed up like Jonathan Venner"!!

The three "street denziens" of Rome - the "gypsy", the "Eurotrasher" and the "street vendor"!!

The "Iowa maiden" had a brother apparently, the "Iowa farmboy", who for some strange reason was hanging out with the "Morman missionary".

Next the "street vendor" turned his wares towards the "Iowa maiden", who rebuffed him soundly with loud snorts and cackling as she figured out who it was.

Here is our "street vendor" trying to sell me a scarf. Sorry, these photos are all kind of dark (I was still trying to figure out my flash settings). (Yeah, it was Jim!)

Ok, now the weird stuff begins!!! Here is the crazy Halloween party that we had here Monday night... yikes. I will prudently leave it to you to figure out just who the heck the old "lady" was!! LOL!

Here is a weird random photo of me from dinner that night...hmm.

Jonathan at prayer - just behind him you can see the splendid "All Saints" display that the seminarians set up for the feast day - I wish I had a better photo of it, it looked great!!

Fast forward... this was our Evening Prayer on Monday night, I took a couple of photos but they weren't very good because of the low light. But you get the picture (haha).

Here is the duplicate of Michelangelo's famous "David" statue (original is now in a really expensive museum). This was pretty much the last photo my old camera took before I ceased working suddenly in this piazza. Boo-hoo. So no more Florence photos! Guess you'll all just have to go there yourself! :)

Here is a photo of the best gelato in Florence!! Yum!

This was a random church I tried the door to, even though the sign said it was only open on Mondays, and when it opened I discovered that there was Eucharistic Adoration going on inside, with just a few locals praying, including this nun up at the front. Very cool!!

All over Florence, the birthplace of Dante, there are these inscriptions quoting Dante's Divine Comedy, I assume they are quotes that mention the various places to which they are attached, but I don't read Italian well enough to be able to figure most of the out (and I don't remember exactly what wall this one was on)

Another view of the interior of the Bapistery.

The interior dome of the Bapistery - pretty cool, done in iconographic mosaic I think.

Another cool shot, showing all three buildings of the Cathedral - the bapistery (left), Cathedral, and the bell tower on the right (camponille)

A great shot of the exterior of the Cathedral.

The inside of the Cathedral, not too impressive really, other than its size, at least to me.

The piazza of the Cathedral (on the right is the separate Bapistery building)

Here is another fresco from the corridor, that many people are probably familiar with (especially someone I know who used this for their Christmas cards last year! :)

An example of one of the cells, this one contains the famous "Mocking of Christ" fresco, known mostly for its striking depiction of St. Dominic in the lower right (my favorite painting of Dominic too).

Here is what the corridor upstairs looked like, with the cell entrances along the sides. (It was lighter up there than the photo looks, FYI.)

When you go up the steps to visit the famed San Marco cells (the rooms where the friars slept), this famous image of the Annunciation by Angelico is the first thing you see!! Stunning. It is also huge, 4 or 5 feet tall and maybe 8 or 10 feet wide.

Along the wall of the cloister is the old chapterhouse room, where the friars met officially. This is a beautiful fresco Angelico painted, again of the scene from Mt. Calvary.

Here is the fresco itself (it's really big actually, maybe 6 feet tall?)

The first cloister/courtyard of the San Marco convent, in the corner you can see a wonderful fresco by Fra Angelico of the Crucifixation.

This is the exterior of the church and convent of San Marco, the famous Dominican convent and home of my favorite artist, Bl. Fra Angelico (who was not buried there though, but here in Rome at the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva). The church was closed when I went there and I didn't get back there again, so I never saw the inside of the church itself. That's ok, I think the convent is the better of the two (Fra Angelico-ly speaking that is :)

A Florence street.

The exterior of Santa Maria Novella.

Masacchio's famous "Trinity" I wish there was someone standing in front of it for scale - it is both bigger and paler than I had expected. Still one of my absolute favorite pieces of art though!

Stained glass in Santa Maria Novella. On the lower right is one of my favorite stained glass images of St. Thomas Aquinas ever.

Now, moving on to my journey to Florence three weekends ago... this was the first church I visited, Santa Maria Novella, which is basically now an art gallery/museum, sadly. They are known for an impressive painting/fresco by Masacchio, the "Trinity", which I will get to in a minute.

On that same day we went down to the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalame - they have a side chapel there that I hadn't seen before, with a display of the Shroud. On the side of the chapel was this very fascinating and moving crucifix, which was made using all of the information about the details of the suffering of the man from the Shroud, down to the positioning on the Cross. It was somewhat shocking to see, even after seeing the movie the Passion of the Christ. To see the exact details, as best they can be known from history and the Shroud record, is incredible. I wish the photo were better, but it was really dark in there.

Nate, in front of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. :)

Tomb of Philip and James (the Less)

Here is the interior of the Church of the Holy Apostles here in Rome, in the crypt under the high altar is the tomb of apostles St. Philip and James (the Less).

More from the talk.

Another shot from the discussion.

Here is the first evening Catholic Studies discussion we had a few Wednesdays ago - Fr. Carola, our chaplain, led a talk on the errors of the book the DaVinci Code. It was a great topic, pretty much the entire Bernardi household came, including most of the Liberal Arts students.

The beautiful cloister in the rear of the Basilica.

The Basilica is known for it's display of the face of every pope, in circles bordering the interior of the basilica. Here is a somewhat poor shot of the "end" of the line - the gold circle in the middle is of John Paul II - it still has not been updated with his dates of birth/death, and the new one of Benedict XVI is still not up yet. One thing that I noticed immediately (and if you've been here before you might have noticed it too...) is that there is no spotlight on the pope anymore - usually there is a spotlight on the image of the current pope, but obviously they don't have the new image of Benedict up yet so...

The nave of St. Paul's - every time I go there the photos end up looking very dark, even though I don't think the light is that dim... more "muted" though.

Well, as you can see, I got my new camera earlier this week - so I can finally get up the photos I took a couple of weeks ago, up to my first day in Florence. I also took some photos over the last couple of days here at Bernardi with the new camera - we're still getting used to it though, so they aren't as good as I hoped. For one thing, this camera seems to be a bit more difficult to hand-hold, I think it is because it is more capable of metering difficult shots properly, but assuming that I have a tripod!! It's going to take me a few days to adjust I think. Anyway, this is a shot from the inside of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the fourth of the major basilicas of Rome. This is a view of the main altar.