Olivia's second catching up post

I'm still behind because I seem to enjoy procrastination. So for Cecily's birthday on Sunday we went to the zoo. We saw lots of interesting animals and peacocks just wandering around. Meredith and Cecily were particularly interested in one peacock we found with two babies. One of the animals that interested me the most was the monkeys. I have a fascination with monkeys and I could just stay and watch them for hours. The most interesting thing about monkeys is the fact that they are probably the most closely related animal to humans. Each monkey has their own personality just like each human. It's fascinating to watch them play and interact with each other. The other interesting fact I learned was that tigers are very close to extinction. I knew they were very close but i did not know that there were fewer than 5,000 left. Overall the zoo day was more interesting than I first imagined it would be. Monday was nice as it was Dad's "administrative day". For the rest of us, that meant sleeping in for however long we wanted and getting a day to just relax and rest our feet. That night we went to a vespers service and learned that some Italians went to church everyday. The service was interesting but also frustrating on some level because I had no idea what they were saying. I just sat and pretended I knew what was happening. We went back home and went to sleep. The next day we decided to go to the catacombs. Once we got there, at noon, we soon learned that they were closed from noon to two so we decided to go instead to visit the papal basilicas. We visited three of the four and are leaving the last one for when Aunt Linda and Uncle Bill arrive. My favorite of the three churches we visited was St. Paul's Outside the Walls. St. Paul's had a beautiful cloister out front when you enter and inside was just gorgeous. Everywhere you turned there was lots of gold and beautiful paintings. What amazed me most through was the sheer size of St. Paul's. From the very front to the back was probably the size of a football field. [I looked it up and I was right, the size of St. Paul's was 490 ft. and the size of a football field is 360 ft.] Even though St. Paul's was my favorite the others were still amazing. I enjoyed the amazing statues at St. John Laterin and the atmosphere at Maria Magiore. Overall, I had a great day.