Day 17: Rome

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October 12, 2009

We awoke a little late in the morning of our only full day in Rome. Our plan for the day was not well thought out but the first stop was the Roman Forum. We have been before but without a guide and we didn follow all the ruins. Our hotel was perhaps a 15 minute walk away and we covered the ground quickly. The lines were long at the Colosseum but we passed them by to get to the Forum entrance.

The audio guides we used had excellent stories and narration but really poor directions and at times we were not sure we were looking at the right stuff. We probably spent three hours touring this site and halfway through the skies opened up with a downpour. This was the first real rain we had had on our entire trip. Our wimpy fold-up umbrella barely held up against the onslaught. We hid under a grove of trees while the paths quickly transformed into rivers. The rain let off enough to let us continue our tour.

On the way out to find a place for lunch, we discovered the street vendors had switched over from selling postcards to umbrellas and we bought a second one for 5 euro. Near the wedding cake building, we found a place recommended by Rick Steves and sat down for a late lunch. Our waitress did not speak any English and we winged it as best we could. Well something got lost in the translation and instead of two glasses of beer we got a huge pitcher of it to split between us. We did the best we could and polished off half of it.

We headed west towards the Pantheon stopping at shops along the way. Judy was quite distracted by it all and I offered to tour the Pantheon on my own and meet up her with her later which we did. I enjoyed my audio guide tour of the Pantheon especially the descriptions of some of the tombs around the perimeter. JUdy joined me and we were about to leave when the winds picked up, the temperatures plummeted and the rain came back. There was a commotion outside and we saw a large store umbrella blown over and flying across the square. It didn look like anyone was injured by it though thankfully. At this point we were cold, wet and tired but luckily were able to find a taxi to go back to the hotel.

Dried off and somewhat recharged, we walked about five minutes from the hotel to find dinner at the La Gallina BIanca. Our meal of pizzas was very good along with our beers. We met a doctor from South Africa here on Rome for a convention and enjoyed our conversation with him. The place filled up by 1930 with a line out the door. It was a quick walk back to our room where we packed up and called it a night.

Tomorrow we head home.

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