Mom and Gary Arrive in Rome - August 29, 2010

Sunday August 29, 2010

Senne's Summary: Mom and Gary arrive in Rome. We walked around and had some dinner.

They're here!

Steve and I decide to do a little exploring to preview Rome. Our first impression is that it is a very beautiful city. It reminds me a bit of Paris.

We decide to walk to a big white building we saw yesterday. Turns out that the big white building is the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II. I don’t really know what that means or why it’s there, but it is a beautiful enormous building.

When we were there we saw some ruins (I think the Forum and Palatine Hill) which we just previewed from the outside. Then we could see the Colosseum down the street so walked down there and looked at it from the outside too. It was all pretty impressive. We walked back home past Circo Massimo (which is a big grassy area now, but used to hold chariot races in Ancient times), and along the Tiber river back to our apartment. It was a long walk in flip-flops and we both said we’d wear runners the next time we went to the Colosseum!

We had a bit of lunch and picked up a bottle of wine (mom instructed that there should be wine waiting for her) and then waited for Mom and Gary.

When they arrived they were surprisingly awake and coherent. They’re better people than we are… when we arrived in Paris we were both tired and mostly incoherent 😀

We did drink a very lovely bottle of wine (4 euros at the grocery store!), had some chocolates and then decided to go out for a walk. (I thought they’d want a nap, but they didn’t!)

We walked to Piazza Navona first where we saw lots of people, art work, musicians and of course the tre fontanas (three fountains). Mom and Gary had their first gelato and then we decided to walk a little further. Steve wanted to show them the big white building, so we appointed Steve the official tour guide and started following him (still in flip flops mind you).

Once we saw the big white building then we had to go see the ruins, then we had to go see the colosseum (you get the picture ☺).

As we were approaching the Colosseum we noticed a large noisy group parading down the sidewalk. Guess who it was? Civil Liberties group? No! Striking workers? No! Political Demonstration? NO! Okay you can stop guessing, you’ll never get it. It was Michael Jackson fans… it’s his birthday. They were all wearing their MJ costumes, t-shirts, gloves and hats and singing his songs. Michael Jackson is well loved in Roma!

When we were walking on the LOOOOOONG walk home I think Mom was getting tired. Gary just kept telling her it was just around the next corner… ha ha ha ha ha…

When we finally made it back we got changed (well some of us did ☺) and headed out for dinner.

As we were leaving the apartment we saw a lady trying to park her car on the side of the road. The space was tight… so tight she knocked over someone’s parked moped! Steve, of course, ran over and picked it up for her and put it back on its stand. The lady said, "grazie" and then continued to try to park in the tight spot… we left… considering she broke the guys carrier on the moped and was probably going to knock it over again… we didn’t want to be associated with her!

We found a nice little restaurant where we ate out on the road (mom says it was an alley, but it’s NOT!) and had a lovely dinner. A nice bottle of Valpolicella, a wonderful meal and some Tiramisu for dessert. It was very lovely (even if Mom says we were in the alley).

After dinner we walked back to Piazza Navona to see what was going on. It was mostly the same as what was going on during the day, but to me it looks prettier at night 😀 (Possibly because of the lighting, possibly because we’d consumed two bottles of wine between the four of us!)

Pretty amazing… on their first day Mom and Gary managed to stay awake all day!