Photo Fail :'(

Levi J and I read an adorable picture book about Rome before we left Florida. He loved the page that featured the Mouth of Truth, and was so excited to visit it! I had never been to it and was excited as well; I adore Audrey Hepburn and Roman Holiday and remember the Mouth of Truth scene well.

The Mouth of Truth (Bocca della Verita) is a stone carving from the 1st century AD that is in the portico of Santa Maria in Cosmedin church. The legend is if you tell a lie and put your hand in his mouth, he will bite off your hand! People really did believe this for a long time.

Well, of course real life usually does not run as smoothly as you plan, ha. The Mouth of Truth was not so quaint as in Roman Holiday; today you have to pay, AND wait in a long line, to get up to it. And then the pictures turned out terribly!! Levi did not focus them at ALL! Plus, when we finally got up to the carving, Levi J was too scared to put his hand in, hahaha! Oh boy. Well, it made for rotten pictures but maybe funny memories?

Seriously, worst picture!!

Nope, not having it! Later, he said he was scared because he had planned to tell a lie and see what happened.

Inside the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. It looked very medieval.

The floors were beautiful.

Afterwards we walked along the Tiber River and over to an island in the river. We also walked by the Circus Maximus, which once upon a time was a giant arena for chariot races. It used to seat 150,000 people! Now there is not much to see, but it's neat to imagine Ben Hur racing here.

The Tiber River

On the right is the Tiber Island

Circus Maximus

We saw some police officers on horseback on our walk, and also saw the most adorable Vespa!

All that walking was followed up by an awesome lunch...authentic Italian lasagne! But no pictures of that. Another day in Rome down! It's all going so quickly!