Roma!

March 22, 2012

We left Introdacqua today with a little sadness because of how authentic and relaxing it was. Jeremy and I finished the Hunger Games, which was a lot of fun to read together, so on our way down to Rome, while I was driving, he quizzed me on muscles of the body. I have to say I did pretty well for jus learning some of them a few days ago. I drove most of the way not Rome, bu decided for Jeremy's sake, I better let him drive. I knew he would be more stressed out in the passenger seat. Not that I'm a bad driver, but he is better. Thankfully Rome was not nearly as bad as Naples, but we were relieved to get rid of the car since parking is a big pain. There are lots of parking areas, but they are all full!

After driving around the train station trying to find where to return the car, we took the metro over to circus massimo, where they used to have chariot races. Stacy Jensen, Kelly's sister was nice enough to put together an itinerar for us. It took is up some little hills overlooking Rome and the Tiber river. We could easily spot st. Peters at the Vatican. One spot even had us looking through the key hole of this gate and it had the dome of st. Peters perfectly framed, but it is a couple of miles away.

I think we walked about 5 miles toda, but my watch died around 3 miles. We even had a guy approach us, trying to give us some Girogio Arman things in exchange for a little gas money. Needless to say, had to remind Jeremy of the dangers of talking to strangers! We also saw this really hideous guy dressed as a woman and tonight on our nightly walk, we saw another one!

Our walk took us up to the colosseum which was so cool! We walked around on the different levels, trying to imagine what it used to look like when it was whole. Parts of it were taken down over the years and "recycled" for other buildings. Right next to it, they are whole bunch of ruins which include the Roman forum some temples and old streets. We walked all the a through and as we were walking, we think we heard guitar playing from the monastary that is in the mix.

Right next to palatine hill is capitoline hill where there are some really beautiful buildings. One of them is this huge, and we are talking huge monument celebrating Italy's independence. The just had their 150 ear celebration last year. Mussolini had the area around it changed up for him so he could have a straighter road in front of it! We picked our way down the street and found the Trevino fountain! It was super crowded, but everyone there is just as eager to see it. It was fun to get close and tr and get a picture of it and throw our coins in. We were supposed to put the coin in our right hand and throw it over our left shoulder. It means you will come back to Rome. Neither one of us did it right since we didn't know about that until later! Oh well. We then walked through the neighbor hood back toward our bed and breakfast, and yes, the do serve a full breakfast, until we fond the pantheon. It is about two blocks away and we didn't even realize we had actually passed it twice when we were trying to find a place to park this morning! It's so a amazing how some of these things are just tucked in between all these buildings!

So far we love it! W enjoyed face timing with Cristin and mom since we have wee-fee in our room! We also got to face time with jeremys folks as well. Dinner isn't usually served until bout 8, so we changed and got ready to go out again for dinner and our nightly walk. Dinner was sooooo good! I had bruschetta first, then spaghetti, which was a first! We also had some yummy roasted veggies and Jeremy's lasagna was so good,that he cleaned his whole plate! I probably would have drank the such if I could. It was so creamy and delicious!

We r pretty pooped and can't believe we are coming home soon! It's been very enjoyable having three very different experiences so far on this trip. We look forward to some more tomorrow. Bono Notte!

PS. Jeremy has out a few pictures up on Facebook.