Coming home

March 24, 2012

It's actually the 25th, but I had more time on the plane to journal then last night when we were trying to go to bed at a normal time. We got all packed up and had to move our clocks ahead an hour since it was the Italian day light savings. Thankfully we were talking to another couple at the restaurant we had dinner in and they told us to make sure we changed or clocks. Jeremy and I couldn't believe that we hadn't he'd anything about that! We were so thankful to heavenly father for that tender mercy! We could ve missed our plane and our taxi to get there!

We spent another day wandering another part of Rome. We enjoyed walking over to the Spanish steps, but learned the hard way that anything within the few blocks vicinity is pretty expensive. Jerm was looking for gelato and a bathroom. We stopped in a place tha looked nice, but not anything super fancy. He was looking at the gelato and I saw some yummy looking chocolate stuff, so I order something while e went to the bathroom. The guy behind the counter insisted we sit. My dessert was three big cream puffs covered in this fudgey yummieness! We ask for the bill and almos fall out of yor chairs: €23 for two things! We couldn't believe! Usually we pay around €2 for a cone! We jus had to laugh at ourselves. It took several blocks to walk off the yucky feeling in our stomach about it, but oh well! They did have a menu outside that listed the prices but we didn't see it until afterward.

We found the spanish steps with hoards of people on them, but it was pretty fun in all the madness. Happy people milling around jus like we were, enjoying the crowd and the scenery. Its about 120 some odd steps to the top where there is a beautiful church that we peeked into where some kind of service was going on. On the right of the steps was the house where the poet John Keats lived until he died of tuberculosis. He was good friends with Percy Shelley, another English poet who died the year after Keats by drowning off the coas of Italy. So now the house is a little museum with some stuff of theirs. They are both buried in the cemeteray in Rome somewhere.

To the left of the church and down a bit, there is a huge (200 acre) park called Villa Borghese. The country villa that is attached this huge park belonged to a very wealth family, the owner being related to the pope at the time, and it says a big art collection with some of Rafael's work, three famous sculptures of Bernini's and also the artist Caravaggio has some work there as well. This place only let's in about 200 at a time, so we needed reservations which we had only gotten the day before for five o'clock. Since we had a bit of time to kill before our reservations, we decided to rent a surrey bike for two! We jumped on and started peddling, quickly realizing that it had a little electric motor on it! It was so helpful up the hills that were all through out the gardens. These gardens aren't nessecarliy ones that have beautiful flowers everywhere, but trees, hedges, sculptures, paths all over the place, a "lake" in the middle, grass with little wild daisies scattered about. It was very green and pretty with many of the trees bright green with their new leaves.

The map we had was not very helpful, so we just kind of threw it to the wind, laughing like maniacs as we were driving crazy up and down the hills. It is a good place to running, too, and I was really missing my normal runs as I watched all these other pele running around!

We took our bike back and went to find lunch off the piazza popplo, another big square in Rome with two twin churches and a huge Egyptian obelisk and fountain in the middle of end square. We've been noticing at all of the public squares, there have been a lot of carabinieri, a form of Italian police, standing around with their big vans and just watching the happenings. Ater our lunch we did see a group of people with some amps and big posters that they were trying to hang on the walls. We couldn't tell what was written on it, but we had heard about some protests that had been going on in Rome about their trains before we got there. We didn't hang around long enough to see the end result, but it was pretty interesting.

We walked back to the museum, we had already been there just to use the bathroom, got or tickets and read a little about what we were going to see. Jeremy and I are kind of lit weights when it comes to looking at art and things. I'm sorry to say that we aren't the type to spend hours pondering some sculpture or painting. We enjoyed it and did enjoy the sheer genius and many hours of work out in. It is truly amazing to see thin leaves carved out of marble that you can see light through. We saw Bernini's amazing sculpture of the young David as he's about to throw the rock in his sling at Goliath. Another one, the Rape of somebody... we could see the pressure of the man hand on the thigh of the woman. And the ceiling paintings looked 3-d they way the used the light and shading. Truly amazing. Needless to say and thank goodness the museum was small, we were done in about 45 mins. We rested outside for about ten minutes and decided to make a in of it to the other side so we could see the sunset over Rome. Oh yeah, and after lunch, it started raining! It stopped by the time we went into the museum, but while we were waiting it out under a tree, I put my scarf on my head to keep a little dryer,and people kept looking at me. I thought, what are they looking at? Jeremy then informed me that maybe they thought I looked like a gypsy! We had a good laugh about that. The gypsy thing is pretty sad. We came across a lot of them, some maimed, some begging, some trying to sell us stuff. At nights, there would be a few trying to sell these light up discs that they would shoot really high into the air. Our kids would have loved them! Some would sell roses, some had these gooey pig slime ball things that could be thrown down. They would splat and make this really funny squeaky sound as they would re inflate. Junk toys tha every kid would love until they broke ten minutes later. Some would go around the Trevino fountain with camera asking if we needed hell taking a picture. We got asked about four times last night. One guy even said free of charge! I should have let him but I said no thank you.

We really enjoyed our nightly walks after dinner. At dinner, we went all out and got more yummy artichokes, Jeremy had a filet that was soooo rare, dad and Erik would have been proud. Jeremy loved it! iPad the typical roman dish of ravioli that had some kind of yummy Gorgonzola and zucchini flower sauce. Sooooo good! We talked to a couple of the couples around us. One was from denver and the other one was a middle aged couple currenlty living in Belgium, the husband Jim has an america passport, but his half german. I noticed him and his wife talking and sometimes it sounded like danish and then I overheard them talking to the waitress, who was from Albania, about languages. Mia, the woman was from Denmark! She was born just south of Aalborg in a town I think called Luca? She lived there until she was thirteen and then her family moved to Germany. They were very nice and gave us some good traveling advice for the future. They also told s about another awesom gelato place, since all gelato is not created equally! Then, thankfully they told s about da light savings!

After we left, we found the amazing gelato. Jeremy and I went all out with three scoops plus real whipped cream! I had ciacollata fondente (dark chocolate), raspberry, and nutella, which I think was really nutella maybe mixed with a little cream! It was amazing! Jeremy had caramel (yum), ciacollata fondente and pistachio. Good combinations for sure. Then we made our rounds, first over to the Trevi, passing through more piazzas and lots of table filled streets with people eating dinner. After the trevi, we heard a man singing opera in the street to some diners, so we stopped to listen. Then on to the pantheon. This building is truly amazing! It is so huge! W just kelt looking at it and not belileveing that it was real! I then started making upmy own roman version of goodnight moon! Goodnight Trevi Fountain, goodnight pantheon. Good night Piazza Navona, goodnight coloseum!

And now we are on a ten hour flight, and then four or five hour flight back real life! Sigh....not of sadness or grudging, but more of what a great time we had. Squaring our shoulders, ready for whats next.