The walls and ceilings were covered with detailed and elaborate mosaics, primarily depicting Jesus Christ and different stories or events from his life.
It was very impressive and I enjoyed looking around. The unfortunate thing about Ravenna was that the sites we were visiting were primarily churches and Stella and churches don't mix well since she doesn't understand the concept of being reverent and whispering. After looking around for a few minutes, I headed out with a restless Stella so as not to disturb the other visitors. And, that is why Ravenna was probably the hardest port for me to enjoy.
After that, we headed off to find Dante's tomb. We went to the church where his funeral was held and where the tomb is located, but as soon as we stepped inside, Stella went nuts, so I turned right around and headed back out. I figured I would wait until Mr. Frisby was done and then he could stay with Stella while I went inside. Little did we know that the church closed at lunchtime, which happened to be just a few minutes after I came back out. So, here is a picture that Mr. Frisby took inside the church. I never saw it.
Apparently, that's a crypt full of water. And, there was a fiasco which involved my mom dropping her sunglasses into that water and then some ensuing chaos of trying to get them out. Again, I missed all of that since I was outside with Stella.
And this is some plaque having to do with Dante's tomb, but according to pictures I've seen of it, that's not actually the tomb. So, I'm not sure if we actually saw the tomb or not. After that, we got lunch because Stella was on the verge of a meltdown. And, truth be told, I was too.
Things were better after lunch. We headed to another site, the Arian Baptistry. I think this may have been when Mr. Frisby and I came up with our system of one of us staying outside with Stella while the other looked around and then switching off. We just abandoned the idea of trying to take her inside at all. And, things went much smoother. The baptistry was cool and, again, full of wonderful mosaics.
From there we headed off to our last couple of sites and stopped in a little chocolate shop that we passed along the way. We bought some chocolates and got directions to the best gelato in town. We went to the last two sites, the Basilica of San Vitale:
And the Mausoleum of Gallo Placidia:
After this we were pretty much mosaiced out. We made a bathroom stop and Stella played in the rocks - one of her favorite things to do everywhere we went.
We then got our delicious gelato, poked around a bit more and then Mr. Frisby and I decided to head back to the ship. We got back with enough time to enjoy the pool for a little while before dinner. Stella had a blast!
Ravenna was good to us, but we were glad it was a more relaxed and low-key day. We had more busy days planned ahead.
3 comments:
You picked the right one to miss. My sunglasses are still in the bottom of the pool. They said they come clean it once a year and I can come back next year and get them. No thanks. Terrell tried but 4 feet of water was just too much.
Should have left Stella with me. And as for Mom's sunglasses, I think I might have dove in.
Ok, yeah. That plaque was not Dante's tomb. We found the tomb which is in a small building about 15 ft. away from that plaque. Don't worry. We took pictures.
However, we missed the church with the water in it and the whole sunglasses fiasco. I would have loved seeing Terrell talk with the guy in Italian and than try to retrieve the sunglasses. Bummer.
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