Europe Week 2: Italy-Rome, Day 2
We returned from our delectable dinner in Italy around 11:40pm, and had everybody tucked in just after midnight. The first daylight view that met Luis and I out one of the windows from our bedroom the next morning was enchanting:
Our morning started at 7:30am, with us getting all the kids up and dressed, then walking over to Piazza del Popolo where there was a tea shop our driver had recommended. The huge square was virtually deserted at 8am, and the sun was shining brightly. We walked through the gates and towards the towering obelisk, just marveling at everything around us.
The shop was right where Alejandro had told us, and the baristo there was very friendly and charming. We learned that if you stood at the bar and devoured your pastry and coffee/beverage, then it was a lot cheaper than sitting down at the tables on the street outside the shop. I had my first of many 'cafe lattes' that morning, and once again smiled from ear to ear at the change in culinary excellency. The kids loved their hot tea with milk and sugar and fresh pastries for their breakfasts. And nobody spilled anything, so it was a WIN for the Garcia kids!
After downing our food, we then set off to make it to the Pantheon by 9am, where we were meeting our guide, Suzanne, from Bella Roma Tours. It took at least 35min to get there, all on foot of course, but we enjoyed the city scenery around us and the ambiance of the place. I was consulting a tourist map along the way, weaving us through tiny streets and alleys. The kids were pointing out things in the shop windows. Luis was in camera heaven, passing all these beautiful buildings.
When we rounded a corner and saw the Pantheon for the first time, I just stopped dead for a minute. It's so stunning to see this almost perfectly preserved building from thousands of years ago.
When I made the reservation for the Rome apartment, I received an email from Bella Roma Tours, asking if we needed any guides while we were in Rome. Since we didn't speak the language, and wanted to learn as much as we could, I replied back that we most definitely were interested. Suzanne wrote back, and we started a great dialogue about what tours she would recommend with kids, and how much we thought they could handle. I cannot recommend her highly enough. She was so fantastic. She's actually from California, and lives between Rome, Thailand (where she's building up another guide business) and California throughout the year.
Because of travel issues with another party who was supposed to join us, but got stuck in Naples due to weather, we had her undivided attention for all of the first day and half of day 2. She had laid out our tour order in what made the most sense, so we started with Ancient Rome in the morning, followed by Crypts and Catacombs in the afternoon, and Vatican City the following afternoon. We were going to be very footsore by the end of it, but it was all well worth it.
And, so, in we went to the Pantheon, where my jaw just about hit the beautiful marble floor. It is so pristine. So colorful. So HUGE. And so well preserved. And the dome with the huge circle at the top completely open to the sky is truly breathtaking. It is *still* the largest unreinforced dome in the world. Suzanne told us it's otherwordly to stand inside the Pantheon when it is raining and watch this sheet of water come straight down from the room and hit the marble floor. It was pretty nifty to see the sun coming through and learn that the monks told time by where the sun was hitting the interior of the dome.
But, we were nowhere near rain in the 40C heat, sadly. We were in for another hot one! This was where Suzanne taught us about pophyry (poh free), or the emperor's stone. This particular type has been mined out of existence from Egypt, and is reported to be valued at up to $25,000 per square *inch*. Everywhere you see the deep magenta flooring in this shot below, you are looking at pophyry. And, Suzanne told us to keep it in mind because the Vatican museum reportedly has 80-90% of all of the pophyry in Italy (I hope I'm getting that right.) Anyways, it was beautiful, and I couldn't believe this historical treasure was open for anyone to walk in. It still operates as a church, after being taken over in 700AD by the Christians.
After walking around the outside of the Pantheon, we stopped in the shade of a strange obelisk statue and Suzanne told us a great story about the history of the statue (the smallest obelisk in Rome) while we slathered everybody with sunscreen. It involved a contest and a determined monk being outgunned by Bernini with the Pope, then Bernini's design being influenced by the monk via the Pope, and the placement of the elephant's rear end facing the monks' quarters offending the monks so much that they all moved out once the statue was erected. Suzanne made it a lot more interesting and funny, of course!
After this, Suzanne suggested we stop at a grocery store for water bottles that we could then refill at one of the city fountains that are constantly flowing from underground springs. So, she took us to a nearby store, and on the way Tommy missed the crosswalk and Luis got this awesome shot of him with a gaggle of nuns. Apparently the correct term for a group of nuns is a "superfluity"...I looked it up. But it would make no sense to say that, so you get gaggle from me. :-) Regardless, it was hysterical.
We stopped by the excavated area that peered into the beginnings of the Theatre of Pompay, where Julias Caesar was murdered by the Senate. The kids had fun counting all of the cats while Suzanne talked.
Then we passed the government building where Mussolini gave all of his famous speeches. (The building on the left in the photo below, not the one straight ahead.)
And, we filled our water bottles, then paused by another beautiful marble building that was dubbed both "Mussolini's Typewriter" (from all of the tapping boots of the troops) or "The Wedding Cake" (for obvious reasons). It is glaringly bright white in the sun.
Next came a walk up a steep road/staircase that was built over the span of 5-10 years solely for a 15min ride for the emperor to ascend in his carriage to the square above in some ceremony. It was midway up when Ethan was christened BIG time by a passing bird. We laughed so hard! Suzanne said the Italians believe it to be good luck when a bird hits you with poo, so we should all get really close to him. I got him cleaned up with tissues and some of the copious water we were carrying and up we climbed.
We caught our breath at the top as Suzanne gave us the history of the square, and then we rounded a corner and could see right down into the grounds of the Forum. It was SO hot. We stopped again at the corner overlooking the Forum and Suzanne explained about the beginnings of Rome, and the civilization it once supported, and the fall of the city due mostly to Constantine moving the capital of the Roman empire away from the city of Rome. It's so fascinating.
Gracie needed a bathroom break at this point, and there wasn't any in the vicinity, so we kept walking towards down towards the entrance to the Forum. It was starting to get crowded with tourists and the vendors who cater to tourists. We caught a majestic glimpse of the Colliseum as we walked down the main street, which is closed to cars on Sundays.
At the entrance to the Forum, Suzanne grabbed our tickets while I took Gracie and Alanna to the restroom. We ended up sneaking into the guys' restroom (which was deserted) because the line for the girls was way too long and we'd reached emergency status by this point with Gracie. Nobody cared, thankfully.
Suzanne had this really cool flippy book that she referenced all through our time in the Forum. It shows you a photo of the current state of the ruins from a particular angle, and then has a glossy overlay page that you flip down on top that fills in the missing structures to show you what the buildings/grounds looked like when they were intact. She took us first to see the pyre site for Julius Caesar's body, which was burned for 7 days and 7 nights. The people of Rome still bring flowers to the site in honor of him.
Then she walked us by another ruin and told us a beautiful/horrific story of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo), which had me blinking my eyes and gritting my teeth to keep from crying by the end of it. He was apparently tasked by the Emperor Valerian to prove the value of this new crazy religion called Christianity in the 250's AD by going out to the Christians and bringing all of their riches back to the Emperor. So, St. Lawrence went out and gathered all of the cripples, widows, orphans, and poor people that he could find and brought them back to the Emperor, telling him, "These are the riches of my God." For which, the Emperor roasted him alive on a gridiron. And, there is another legend that says that St. Lawrence told the guards that he wasn't quite done and they'd better turn him over to cook his other side. Man, I hope I get a chance to meet him in heaven some day. :-) The rectangular block at the bottom of the stairs in this shot is where he was burnt alive.
As we headed up out of the Forum towards the Colliseum, we passed a couple of victory arches. I can't remember if this one was for Constantine or something else. I do remember Suzanne telling us that as the Romans would return from their heinous battles to expand the Roman empire, they would march up to 70,000 Jews through the center of the arches as they returned with them as their new slaves.
The last stop of our Ancient Rome tour was the Colliseum. It was so massive and overwhelming.
Suzanne had once again planned things perfectly because the tickets we bought at the Forum also got us into the Colliseum, so we passed literally hundreds and hundreds of people that would be standing in line for hours to get into the Colliseum just by holding our tickets up in the air and grabbing onto the kids and shoving through the crowds until we passed through the turnstyles that were monitored by the guards. And we were in! We walked aways around the bottom and stopped to get some of the history from Suzanne, then hoofed it to the top so we could see the interior. Then she pulled out the gorier stories that made me cringe at my kids' hearing all of the blood sports that used to go on there. But, they ate it up and asked all kinds of questions.
This post is already getting insanely long, so I'm going to abbreviate our lunch stop...just briefly mention that Suzanne dropped us at the restaurant she recommended. It was air conditioned! It had chairs! It had delicious food! It had ice cream! We were almost numb from all we'd packed into our heads, and enjoyed discussing it all with the kids as we ate. We had 90min to relax and recuperate. My feet had just about stopped throbbing when it was time to get going.
As we met up with Suzanne for the next half of the day, we started off at an unassuming church just down the street from the restaurant she had taken us to. It was called the San Clemente Basilica, and is completely unique because it has a 900yr old beautiful church built on top of a 4th century church, which is built on top of a 1st century Mithraic temple and some original Roman buildings. Seriously. You can see the arches from the lower church in the base of the walls of the current church...which is 900yrs old. And, after paying to visit the excavations, you descend first to the 4th century church, and then again another set of stairs down to the original level from 2000 years ago. Suzanne thinks it's one of the best tourist sites in all of Rome, and very few people go there because they don't know about it. Here's the website if you want to check it out: http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/
After dragging our heads back into the 21st century, we walked back to close to the Colliseum to catch a couple of taxis to take us out to the Catacombs. We stopped to refill our water bottles again, and I continued to be so impressed that these fountains were everywhere in the city and constantly flowing with clean, pure water. What the heck, America?! Think of the plastic we could be saving.
The first place that we stopped was actually closed on Sundays, and the taxis had already departed, so we had a nice *long* leisurely walk down a beautiful avenue to another Catacombs that was open for tours.
We bought our tickets for the last tour of the day and then waited to be called. Suzanne wasn't allowed to be our guide during the actual tour inside the Catacombs, but she accompanied us. The little nun who was giving the tour was so phenomenal. She definitely had the spirit of an evangelist. I was honestly expecting her to give an alter call by the time the tour was over, and at one point thought that she actually was inviting us all to start singing a hymn together as we crowded into one of the small squares down inside the Catacombs, where Christians used to gather to hold church when they were being persecuted. The fact that the Catacombs were outside the city gates was another indication that Christianity was not accepted or approved of when they were created. She told us there are 60 known Christian catacomb sites around Rome, with another 9 Jewish sites (I might be remembering that number wrong), and approximately 500,000 graves, many of which were of infants because the mortality rate was so high back then.
I wasn't expecting someone so passionate and so truly moving as the guide to these cramped, dark, and confusing passageways of tombs. She inspired me. She was very proud of the heritage of the people who gave their lives to stand for the Christian faith all through the years, so that pilgrims like those of us standing there could come and learn about the history and be free to practice that same faith, in all its permutations, all these hundreds and hundreds of years later.
After we ascended back into the sunlight, we walked all the way back to where we'd been dropped off by the taxis, only to decide that we'd better try to catch a bus back to town, since the taxi traffic would be very few and far between. So, we turned around and walked back down a main street. As we did, Suzanne told us the story of Peter's escape from prison and fleeing down that same exact road only to be stopped by God asking him, "Peter, where are you going?", so he turned around and returned to be crucified upside down for his faith. This account is apparently in the Catholic Bible, but has been removed (not sure why?) from the Protestant Bible. I have plans to do some research around this when I have some time.
Anyways, we saw a bus in the distance, and ran about 150yards to make it onto the bus before it took off. After the insane, INSANE amount of walking we'd already done, I can't believe we all found the energy. The kids had never once complained about their feet hurting, or all the walking...and all of this on 7hrs of sleep. I held Alanna and Gracie on my knees as we squished into a partial seat, and just marveled at the day.
Suzanne had us all get out at the Circus Maximus, and gave us a brief history of the chariot races and other games that had been held there, seating 300,000 people. Then we parted ways, and we hobbled our way into the Metro of Rome, buying our tickets and jumping onto a train to take us four or five stops and one line transfer over to Piazza del Popolo.
We were one sorry group of travelers by the time we made it back to our apartment. We did make one stop at an import shop on the street by our house, where I could buy pancake mix, syrup, and peanut butter. When we finally walked through our door, it was 7pm, and the kids immediately started playing games in our awesome apartment, while Luis and I crashed like ragdolls on the couch, trying to muster the gumption to get back up and walk BACK down to the restaurants surrounding the square (10-15mins walk).
The energy was mustered an hour later, and we headed back to the same restaurant we'd gone to almost 24hrs before, only it was closed due to it being Sunday, so we went across the street to another place and grabbed another great dinner sitting streetside with all our kids. I took Gracie (our resident fairy) over to BK next door to get her some actual food that she would eat, and brought it back to our table.
We sat and ate and talked about the favorite parts of our day. Then took care of the bill and started the slow walk home. We got the kids tucked in right away, and then I took a long hot bath in the huge tub off our bedroom, and just about passed out before I could crawl into bed. It had been such a great day. And we still had one more full day to go. :-)
Next up...Vatican City!
Our morning started at 7:30am, with us getting all the kids up and dressed, then walking over to Piazza del Popolo where there was a tea shop our driver had recommended. The huge square was virtually deserted at 8am, and the sun was shining brightly. We walked through the gates and towards the towering obelisk, just marveling at everything around us.
The shop was right where Alejandro had told us, and the baristo there was very friendly and charming. We learned that if you stood at the bar and devoured your pastry and coffee/beverage, then it was a lot cheaper than sitting down at the tables on the street outside the shop. I had my first of many 'cafe lattes' that morning, and once again smiled from ear to ear at the change in culinary excellency. The kids loved their hot tea with milk and sugar and fresh pastries for their breakfasts. And nobody spilled anything, so it was a WIN for the Garcia kids!
After downing our food, we then set off to make it to the Pantheon by 9am, where we were meeting our guide, Suzanne, from Bella Roma Tours. It took at least 35min to get there, all on foot of course, but we enjoyed the city scenery around us and the ambiance of the place. I was consulting a tourist map along the way, weaving us through tiny streets and alleys. The kids were pointing out things in the shop windows. Luis was in camera heaven, passing all these beautiful buildings.
When we rounded a corner and saw the Pantheon for the first time, I just stopped dead for a minute. It's so stunning to see this almost perfectly preserved building from thousands of years ago.
When I made the reservation for the Rome apartment, I received an email from Bella Roma Tours, asking if we needed any guides while we were in Rome. Since we didn't speak the language, and wanted to learn as much as we could, I replied back that we most definitely were interested. Suzanne wrote back, and we started a great dialogue about what tours she would recommend with kids, and how much we thought they could handle. I cannot recommend her highly enough. She was so fantastic. She's actually from California, and lives between Rome, Thailand (where she's building up another guide business) and California throughout the year.
Because of travel issues with another party who was supposed to join us, but got stuck in Naples due to weather, we had her undivided attention for all of the first day and half of day 2. She had laid out our tour order in what made the most sense, so we started with Ancient Rome in the morning, followed by Crypts and Catacombs in the afternoon, and Vatican City the following afternoon. We were going to be very footsore by the end of it, but it was all well worth it.
And, so, in we went to the Pantheon, where my jaw just about hit the beautiful marble floor. It is so pristine. So colorful. So HUGE. And so well preserved. And the dome with the huge circle at the top completely open to the sky is truly breathtaking. It is *still* the largest unreinforced dome in the world. Suzanne told us it's otherwordly to stand inside the Pantheon when it is raining and watch this sheet of water come straight down from the room and hit the marble floor. It was pretty nifty to see the sun coming through and learn that the monks told time by where the sun was hitting the interior of the dome.
But, we were nowhere near rain in the 40C heat, sadly. We were in for another hot one! This was where Suzanne taught us about pophyry (poh free), or the emperor's stone. This particular type has been mined out of existence from Egypt, and is reported to be valued at up to $25,000 per square *inch*. Everywhere you see the deep magenta flooring in this shot below, you are looking at pophyry. And, Suzanne told us to keep it in mind because the Vatican museum reportedly has 80-90% of all of the pophyry in Italy (I hope I'm getting that right.) Anyways, it was beautiful, and I couldn't believe this historical treasure was open for anyone to walk in. It still operates as a church, after being taken over in 700AD by the Christians.
After walking around the outside of the Pantheon, we stopped in the shade of a strange obelisk statue and Suzanne told us a great story about the history of the statue (the smallest obelisk in Rome) while we slathered everybody with sunscreen. It involved a contest and a determined monk being outgunned by Bernini with the Pope, then Bernini's design being influenced by the monk via the Pope, and the placement of the elephant's rear end facing the monks' quarters offending the monks so much that they all moved out once the statue was erected. Suzanne made it a lot more interesting and funny, of course!
After this, Suzanne suggested we stop at a grocery store for water bottles that we could then refill at one of the city fountains that are constantly flowing from underground springs. So, she took us to a nearby store, and on the way Tommy missed the crosswalk and Luis got this awesome shot of him with a gaggle of nuns. Apparently the correct term for a group of nuns is a "superfluity"...I looked it up. But it would make no sense to say that, so you get gaggle from me. :-) Regardless, it was hysterical.
We stopped by the excavated area that peered into the beginnings of the Theatre of Pompay, where Julias Caesar was murdered by the Senate. The kids had fun counting all of the cats while Suzanne talked.
Then we passed the government building where Mussolini gave all of his famous speeches. (The building on the left in the photo below, not the one straight ahead.)
And, we filled our water bottles, then paused by another beautiful marble building that was dubbed both "Mussolini's Typewriter" (from all of the tapping boots of the troops) or "The Wedding Cake" (for obvious reasons). It is glaringly bright white in the sun.
Next came a walk up a steep road/staircase that was built over the span of 5-10 years solely for a 15min ride for the emperor to ascend in his carriage to the square above in some ceremony. It was midway up when Ethan was christened BIG time by a passing bird. We laughed so hard! Suzanne said the Italians believe it to be good luck when a bird hits you with poo, so we should all get really close to him. I got him cleaned up with tissues and some of the copious water we were carrying and up we climbed.
We caught our breath at the top as Suzanne gave us the history of the square, and then we rounded a corner and could see right down into the grounds of the Forum. It was SO hot. We stopped again at the corner overlooking the Forum and Suzanne explained about the beginnings of Rome, and the civilization it once supported, and the fall of the city due mostly to Constantine moving the capital of the Roman empire away from the city of Rome. It's so fascinating.
Gracie needed a bathroom break at this point, and there wasn't any in the vicinity, so we kept walking towards down towards the entrance to the Forum. It was starting to get crowded with tourists and the vendors who cater to tourists. We caught a majestic glimpse of the Colliseum as we walked down the main street, which is closed to cars on Sundays.
At the entrance to the Forum, Suzanne grabbed our tickets while I took Gracie and Alanna to the restroom. We ended up sneaking into the guys' restroom (which was deserted) because the line for the girls was way too long and we'd reached emergency status by this point with Gracie. Nobody cared, thankfully.
Suzanne had this really cool flippy book that she referenced all through our time in the Forum. It shows you a photo of the current state of the ruins from a particular angle, and then has a glossy overlay page that you flip down on top that fills in the missing structures to show you what the buildings/grounds looked like when they were intact. She took us first to see the pyre site for Julius Caesar's body, which was burned for 7 days and 7 nights. The people of Rome still bring flowers to the site in honor of him.
Then she walked us by another ruin and told us a beautiful/horrific story of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo), which had me blinking my eyes and gritting my teeth to keep from crying by the end of it. He was apparently tasked by the Emperor Valerian to prove the value of this new crazy religion called Christianity in the 250's AD by going out to the Christians and bringing all of their riches back to the Emperor. So, St. Lawrence went out and gathered all of the cripples, widows, orphans, and poor people that he could find and brought them back to the Emperor, telling him, "These are the riches of my God." For which, the Emperor roasted him alive on a gridiron. And, there is another legend that says that St. Lawrence told the guards that he wasn't quite done and they'd better turn him over to cook his other side. Man, I hope I get a chance to meet him in heaven some day. :-) The rectangular block at the bottom of the stairs in this shot is where he was burnt alive.
As we headed up out of the Forum towards the Colliseum, we passed a couple of victory arches. I can't remember if this one was for Constantine or something else. I do remember Suzanne telling us that as the Romans would return from their heinous battles to expand the Roman empire, they would march up to 70,000 Jews through the center of the arches as they returned with them as their new slaves.
The last stop of our Ancient Rome tour was the Colliseum. It was so massive and overwhelming.
Suzanne had once again planned things perfectly because the tickets we bought at the Forum also got us into the Colliseum, so we passed literally hundreds and hundreds of people that would be standing in line for hours to get into the Colliseum just by holding our tickets up in the air and grabbing onto the kids and shoving through the crowds until we passed through the turnstyles that were monitored by the guards. And we were in! We walked aways around the bottom and stopped to get some of the history from Suzanne, then hoofed it to the top so we could see the interior. Then she pulled out the gorier stories that made me cringe at my kids' hearing all of the blood sports that used to go on there. But, they ate it up and asked all kinds of questions.
This post is already getting insanely long, so I'm going to abbreviate our lunch stop...just briefly mention that Suzanne dropped us at the restaurant she recommended. It was air conditioned! It had chairs! It had delicious food! It had ice cream! We were almost numb from all we'd packed into our heads, and enjoyed discussing it all with the kids as we ate. We had 90min to relax and recuperate. My feet had just about stopped throbbing when it was time to get going.
As we met up with Suzanne for the next half of the day, we started off at an unassuming church just down the street from the restaurant she had taken us to. It was called the San Clemente Basilica, and is completely unique because it has a 900yr old beautiful church built on top of a 4th century church, which is built on top of a 1st century Mithraic temple and some original Roman buildings. Seriously. You can see the arches from the lower church in the base of the walls of the current church...which is 900yrs old. And, after paying to visit the excavations, you descend first to the 4th century church, and then again another set of stairs down to the original level from 2000 years ago. Suzanne thinks it's one of the best tourist sites in all of Rome, and very few people go there because they don't know about it. Here's the website if you want to check it out: http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/
After dragging our heads back into the 21st century, we walked back to close to the Colliseum to catch a couple of taxis to take us out to the Catacombs. We stopped to refill our water bottles again, and I continued to be so impressed that these fountains were everywhere in the city and constantly flowing with clean, pure water. What the heck, America?! Think of the plastic we could be saving.
The first place that we stopped was actually closed on Sundays, and the taxis had already departed, so we had a nice *long* leisurely walk down a beautiful avenue to another Catacombs that was open for tours.
We bought our tickets for the last tour of the day and then waited to be called. Suzanne wasn't allowed to be our guide during the actual tour inside the Catacombs, but she accompanied us. The little nun who was giving the tour was so phenomenal. She definitely had the spirit of an evangelist. I was honestly expecting her to give an alter call by the time the tour was over, and at one point thought that she actually was inviting us all to start singing a hymn together as we crowded into one of the small squares down inside the Catacombs, where Christians used to gather to hold church when they were being persecuted. The fact that the Catacombs were outside the city gates was another indication that Christianity was not accepted or approved of when they were created. She told us there are 60 known Christian catacomb sites around Rome, with another 9 Jewish sites (I might be remembering that number wrong), and approximately 500,000 graves, many of which were of infants because the mortality rate was so high back then.
I wasn't expecting someone so passionate and so truly moving as the guide to these cramped, dark, and confusing passageways of tombs. She inspired me. She was very proud of the heritage of the people who gave their lives to stand for the Christian faith all through the years, so that pilgrims like those of us standing there could come and learn about the history and be free to practice that same faith, in all its permutations, all these hundreds and hundreds of years later.
After we ascended back into the sunlight, we walked all the way back to where we'd been dropped off by the taxis, only to decide that we'd better try to catch a bus back to town, since the taxi traffic would be very few and far between. So, we turned around and walked back down a main street. As we did, Suzanne told us the story of Peter's escape from prison and fleeing down that same exact road only to be stopped by God asking him, "Peter, where are you going?", so he turned around and returned to be crucified upside down for his faith. This account is apparently in the Catholic Bible, but has been removed (not sure why?) from the Protestant Bible. I have plans to do some research around this when I have some time.
Anyways, we saw a bus in the distance, and ran about 150yards to make it onto the bus before it took off. After the insane, INSANE amount of walking we'd already done, I can't believe we all found the energy. The kids had never once complained about their feet hurting, or all the walking...and all of this on 7hrs of sleep. I held Alanna and Gracie on my knees as we squished into a partial seat, and just marveled at the day.
Suzanne had us all get out at the Circus Maximus, and gave us a brief history of the chariot races and other games that had been held there, seating 300,000 people. Then we parted ways, and we hobbled our way into the Metro of Rome, buying our tickets and jumping onto a train to take us four or five stops and one line transfer over to Piazza del Popolo.
We were one sorry group of travelers by the time we made it back to our apartment. We did make one stop at an import shop on the street by our house, where I could buy pancake mix, syrup, and peanut butter. When we finally walked through our door, it was 7pm, and the kids immediately started playing games in our awesome apartment, while Luis and I crashed like ragdolls on the couch, trying to muster the gumption to get back up and walk BACK down to the restaurants surrounding the square (10-15mins walk).
The energy was mustered an hour later, and we headed back to the same restaurant we'd gone to almost 24hrs before, only it was closed due to it being Sunday, so we went across the street to another place and grabbed another great dinner sitting streetside with all our kids. I took Gracie (our resident fairy) over to BK next door to get her some actual food that she would eat, and brought it back to our table.
We sat and ate and talked about the favorite parts of our day. Then took care of the bill and started the slow walk home. We got the kids tucked in right away, and then I took a long hot bath in the huge tub off our bedroom, and just about passed out before I could crawl into bed. It had been such a great day. And we still had one more full day to go. :-)
Next up...Vatican City!