Stopped keeping track of days; I'm in Rome

Went to Brescia a day early, so no Venice, but Brescia was very nice and I got to visit with Francesco's family.  Then, Esther and I went to Rome and have been here for 6 days, I believe.  I've seen so much stuff.  You really have to check out facebook to see all of my pictures, there's a lot.  1st day we went to a few churches and monuments and I got to see Piazza Navona and the Fountain of the Four Rivers, as described in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.  I then resolved to see the other 4 points described in the book:  Castle di San Angelo, The church of Santa Maria del Poppolo, Santa Maria del Vittoria, and The obelisk in Saint Peter's square, but more on that later.  The 1st night was a Sunday and Esther showed me her favorite church, the Santa Maria in Trastevere, earlier that day, so we went to Catholic mass there at 6:30.  I'd never been to mass, and it was a new and interesting experience for me.  Other points I've visited are the Colosseum, of course, The Forums, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, etc.  It's a very exciting city and you can get almost everywhere on foot.  One evening, I took a walk and ended up at Campo de Fiori, where two guys were playing Bob Dylan songs next to a statue.  I stood and listened for a while.  Another cool thing was walking along Via Giulia, because i randomly recognized many of the intersections from the choir trip.  In fact, i think Chris Petty took a picture of a part of the street only 2 minutes away from the apartment.  What a coincidence.  Anyway, it is a beautiful city and today, Esther took me to two interesting places.  The first was Villa Borghese, an old estate that is now a park.  It's basically a massive garden with trees, fountains, statues, and a lake.  I could walk around it all day, and I almost did.  The other was a video installation, designed by Brian Eno called Presentism, celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the Futuristic art and music movement in Rome.  It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, but I will try to describe it.  Basically, the theory behind a video installation, is to have multiple screens, set up artistically, displaying various images or works of art, all dissolving into each other, set to music.  This one, was set up like a movie theater, with seats and the screens set up in a symmetrical (rotational symmetry that is) design, rotating through dozens of different combinations of digital artwork all set to kind of enyaesque, new wave, ambient, psychedellic music.  Also, to the lower right of the main design, was a simple square screen that simply cycled through different colors, according to musical cues.  And on the floor in fron of this were two piles of sand.  one larger and more spread out, and the other, in front of the larger one, was smaller and stacked higher.  The smaller pile had one constant color light shining on it from above, the larger pile had a light above it that cycled through colors.  It was very strange.  Sort of relaxing in an erie sort of way.  Anyway, it's late, and I'm going to bed.  Song of the Day: The Rake's Song by The Decemberists.