Sorry for the posting delay. Between travel home, jet lag, and sickness, I’ve been neglecting my photoblog responsibilities.
ROMA!!
Tuesday morning, we left the house early, stopped for breakfast at RomAntica, the restaurant downstairs, then began our wanderings of the city. Our eventual goal was to stop at the Pontifical North American College to pick up our tickets for Wednesday’s Papal audience, but we figured we’d make a trek out of it. Silly us.
We may have been overly optimistic in our planning…
The first leg led us through the southern edge of Parco Del Colle Oppio, near the Coliseum.
Stanley demanded to come along.
We made our way around to the south side of the Coliseum, near Arco di Costantino in order to approximate the spot where dad stood in 1959 to take a photograph. We were mostly successful!
58 Years Later…
Then we wandered up towards the Forum. We got to see the Arch of Titus, but we didn’t get any farther because the line to get through security was SUUUUUPER long. So we marched onward, up Via del Fori Imperiali, past Foro di Augusto, where we stopped for some photo opportunities.
You’d never know they weren’t biologically related…
A quick circuit of the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the Altar of the Fatherland, and we were on our way to Trevi Fountain.
You can ALMOST see Stanley in this one. He’s too short for selfies.
He doesn’t always like riding on my back.
After some quality time resting the feet at the fountain, we headed to the Spanish Steps, where we stopped and had a nice lunch, and met some nice (if needy) travelers from Ireland.
You can kinda see the Spanish Steps in the background there…
And then onward, towards the Pantheon, with a surprise stop at the Fountain of the Four Rivers.
At this point, we were all dog tired, but we had to get to the Pontifical College by 6 to get our tickets, so we headed across the river to St. Peter’s Square.
Stanley goes to the Vatican…
I left the folks to sit at St. Peter’s Square while I did the last leg of the trip solo. I didn’t KNOW it was uphill, but I’m glad I trusted my instincts, because it was uphill. Twice.
Twice?
Oh yes.
Google Maps failed me.
The blue dotted line is where it was SUPPOSED to take me. The red dotted line is where it actually took me…
I departed St. Peter’s Square and headed south, finding a very difficult street to cross, that required an underpass. But on the other side, the route became very clear, and I headed up the hill, thankful that I had left the parents (and Stanley) sitting in the square, because it was a pretty significant hill. As I approached my destination, I got a bit of a foreboding feeling, because on my left, where there should have been buildings, was a 30 or so foot high wall. And sure enough, when I reached my “destination” I was greeted with nothing but a brick wall.
I frustrated search on the internet later, I realized where Google Maps had steered me wrong, girded my loins, and went back DOWN the hill, through the tunnel UNDER the hill, then back up the other side of the hill, where I finally reached my destination.
The nuns, and Father Levi were all SUPER awesome. They got me my tickets, I sat through orientation, and Father Levi spilled all the secrets about where to sit and when to get there, and then I headed back to find the parental units.
We took a cab home, because feet.
And we all slept REALLY well that night.
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